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UMBERTO BOCCIONI 



UMBERTO 
BOCCIONI 

ESTER COEN 



THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART 

Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York 



This publication is issued in conjunction with the exhibition 
Boccioni: A Retrospective, held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art 
from September 15, 1988, to January 8, 1989. 

This exhibition is made possible by EniChem Americas Inc. 

Additional support has been received from the National Endowment for 
the Arts, the Italian Cultural Institute, and the William Randolph Hearst 
Foundation. An indemnity has been granted by the Federai Council 
on the Arts and the Humanities. 

Copyright © 1988 The Metropolitan Museum of Art 
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art 
John P. O'Neill, Editor in Chief 

Kathleen Howard, Editor, with the assistance of Barbara Cavaliere 

Anne L. Strauss, Research Assistant 

Gerald Pryor, Designer 

Gwen Roginsky and Jean Levitt, Production 

Translated by Robert Erich Wolf 

The lenders have supplied photographs of the works in the exhibition, 
with the exception of those in the Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, 
which were photographed by Sheldan Comfert Collins, New York. 

Type set in Bembo and Benguiat by U. S. Lithograph, typographers, 
New York 

Printed on Gardamatte Brilliante, 135 gsm 

Separations made by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p. A., Verona, Italy 
Printed and bound by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p. A., Verona, Italy 

half title: Umberto Boccioni, Study for "Unique Forms of Continuity 
in Space, "no. 72 A 

frontispiece: Umberto Boccioni, l-We-Boccioni (lo noi Boccioni), ca. 1906. 

Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan. Courtesy Angelo Calmarini 
front cover: Riot in the Galleria, no. 49 

back cover: Umberto Boccioni, ca. 1913-14. Photo: Electa Editrice, Milan 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 
Coen, Ester. 

Umberto Boccioni / by Ester Coen, 
p. cm. 

Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
Bibliography: p. 
Includes index. 

ISBN 0-87099-522-7. ISBN 0-87099-523-5 (pbk.). 
ISBN 0-8109-0721-6 (Abrams) 

1. Boccioni, Umberto, 1882-1916 — Exhibitions. 2. Futurism 
(Art) — Italy — Exhibitions. I. Boccioni, Umberto, 1882-1916. 
II. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N. Y.) III. Title. 
N6923.B587A4 1988 88-9006 
709'. 2'4— dcl9 CIP 



Contents 



Foreword vii 
by Philippe de Montebello, Director 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Acknowledgments ix 

List of Lenders xi 

Umberto Boccioni xii 

The Futurists and Their Contemporaries xxxvii 

Paintings and Drawings 1 

Sculpture, Etchings, and Cartoons 201 

Writings 227 

Bibliography 262 

List of Exhibitions 267 

Index 270 



Director's Foreword 



The Metropolitan Museum's commitment to 
collecting and exhibiting twentieth-century art 
has been confirmed with the opening of the Lila 
Acheson Wallace Wing. Boccioni: A Retrospective 
is the first exhibition comprised of international 
loans organized by the Department of 20th- 
Century Art to be shown in the Wallace Wing's 
galleries. It inaugurates a program of scholarly 
exhibitions focusing on major figures and move- 
ments in twentieth-century art. 

Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) is best 
known as perhaps the leading exponent of 
Futurism. This is the first exhibition in the 
United States devoted to documenting Boccionfs 
complete achievement as an artisti his early 
landscapes and portraits; his Expressionist and 
Symbolist experiments and his observations of 
the industriai urban scene; and his heroic devel- 
opment of Futurism. It affords an unprecedented 
opportunity to evaluate the artist through his 
paintings, sculptures, drawings, and etchings. 

William S. Lieberman, Chairman of the 
Department of 20th-Century Art, initiated this 
exhibition, and it profited greatly from his 
expertise and guidance. Ester Coen, an author- 
ity on Boccioni, has acted as consultant to the 
exhibition and has written the substantive cata- 
logne. She has also given important assistance 
in securing loans from abroad. 

I would like to give particular thanks to the 
members of the Museum staff who have con- 
tributed to the organization of the exhibition 
and to the publication of its catalogue: Mahrukh 
Tarapor, Assistant Director, who played a major 
role in the planning stages and negotiated im- 
portant loans; Anne L. Strauss, Research Assis- 
tant, Department of 20th-Century Art, who 
dealt with ali aspects of the project with exem- 
plary care and skill; Kathleen Howard, Senior 
Editor, who shaped the exhibition catalogue; 



Daniel Berger, who gave much-appreciated 
assistance in Rome; and Gabriella Befani 
Canfield, Assistant Museum Educator, for her 
efforts in organizing the lecture program. 

A great debt is owed to the lenders; with- 
out their participation this retrospective, in 
which a number of works are exhibited for the 
first time in the United States, could not have 
been assembled. 

The collaboration with our colleagues in 
Italy has been marked by generosity and good 
will; their invaluable support secured many 
essential loans. Among those who have our 
deep gratitude are: 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs 

Giulio Andreotti, Minister of Foreign Affairs 

Bruno Bottai, Secretary General, Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs 

Giulio Cesare Di Lorenzo Badia, Director 
General for Emigration and Social Affairs 

Corrado Taliani, Permanent Representative to 
the United Nations, Vienna, former Director 
General for Cultural Relations 

Sergio Silvio Balanzino, Director General for 
Cultural Relations 

Umberto Vattani, Diplomatic Advisor to the 
Italian President of the Council of Ministers, 
former Chief of the Office of the Secretary 
General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 

Giancarlo Riccio, Chief of the Office for 
Cultural Activities, Directorate General for 
Emigration and Social Affairs 

Gianluigi Mascia, Italian Embassy, Pretoria, 
former chief of the Director Generafs Staff, 
Directorate General for Cultural Relations 

Elisabetta Kelescian, Head of the Office for 
International Exhibitions, Directorate Gen- 
eral for Cultural Relations 



vii 



Maria Rosa Girace, Office for International 
Exhibitions, Directorate General for Cultural 
Relations 

Ministry of National Patrimony 
Vincenza Bono-Parrino, Minister of National 
Patrimony 

Francesco Sisinni, Director General, Central 
Office for Environmental, Architectural, 
Archaeological, Artistic, and Historical 
Patrimony 

Rosetta Mosco-Agresti, Divisionai Chief, 
Central Office for Environmental, 
Architectural, Archaeological, Artistic, and 
Historical Patrimony 

Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment 

Franco Carraro, Minister of Tourism and 
Entertainment 

Milan 

Paolo Pillitteri, Mayor, City of Milan 
Rome 

Vincenzo Balzamo, Member of Chamber of 
Deputies 

Embassy of The United States of America to Italy 
Maxwell M. Rabb, United States Ambassador 
to Italy 



Robert C. McLaughlin, Cultural Attaché, Em- 
bassy of The United States of America, Rome 

Daniela Masci, Cultural Assistant, Embassy of 
The United States of America, Rome 



This exhibition has been made possible by 
EniChem Americas Inc., without whose gener- 
osity it could not have taken place. We would 
like to extend our special thanks to Alfredo de 
Marzio, President and Chief Executive Officer 
of this corporation. Additional support has 
been received from the National Endowment 
for the Arts, the Italian Cultural Institute, and 
the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. An 
indemnity has been granted by the Federai 
Council on the Arts and the Humanities. 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedi- 
cates this catalogue to Lydia Winston Malbin, 
one of the foremost American collectors of 
twentieth-century art. We are most pleased to 
honor her extraordinary discernment and her 
unfailing commitment to making a wider pub- 
lic familiar with modem works, especially those 
of the Futurists. 

Philippe de Montebello 

Director 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art 



Vili 



Acknowledgments 



I am most grateful to Philippe de Montebello, 
Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
for having enthusiastically agreed to the Boccioni 
retrospective proposed by William S. Lieberman, 
Chairman of the Museum's Department of 
20th-Century Art. Mr. Lieberman has my deep 
thanks for having conceived this exhibition. 
Mahrukh Tarapor, Assistant Director, has given 
me valuable assistance in the planning and the 
realization of this exhibition. Anne L. Strauss, 
Research Assistant, Department of 20th-Century 
Art, has been an indispensable collaborator. I 
am also especially appreciative of the efforts of 
Kay Bearman, Salvatore Porcellati, Ida Balboul, 
and Rochelle J. Cohen of the Department of 
20th-Century Art. 

I thank John P. O'Neill, Editor in Chief, 
for his energetic participation in the creation of 
the catalogue. This publication owes much to 
the criticai sensibility of Kathleen Howard, 
Senior Editor, and to the elegant design of 
Gerald Pryor. Heidi Colsman-Freyberger con- 
tributed important bibliographical information. 

I am deeply grateful to Robert Erich Wolf 
who translated my text with expertise. 

I was helped by many members of the 
Museum's staff. I would like to extend special 
thanks to the following: Emily Kernan Rafferty, 
Nina McN. Diefenbach, Susan E. Walsh, Mary 
Presley Schwinn, and Carol Ehler of the Office 
of the Vice President for Development; Linden 
Havemeyer Wise of the Counsel's Office; 
Linda M. Sylling of the Office of the Vice 
President for Operations; Martha Deese of the 
Director's Office; Jeffrey L. Daly, Michael C. 
Batista, and Anne R. Gozonsky of the Design 
Department; John Buchanan, Herbert M. 
Moskowitz, Jennifer Roundy, and Nina S. 
Maruca of the Registrar's Office; Gabriella 
Befani Canfield, Marian Burleigh-Motley, 



Henriette Montgomery, Leslie Yudell, and Linda 
Wolk-Simon of Education Services; John Ross 
and Deborah Roldan of Public Information; 
Lydia Mannara of the Department of Greek 
and Roman Art; Lucy Belloli of Paintings 
Conservation; Helen K. Otis of Paper Conser- 
vation; Yale Kneeland of Objects Conserva- 
tion; Diana Kaplan, Deanna D. Cross, and 
Susan Melick of the Photograph and Slide 
Library; and Barbara Bridgers of the Photo- 
graph Studio. Carla Panicali, Christopher Burge, 
Michael Findlay, and Dana Cranmer were also 
helpful in New York. 

Indispensable to the realization of this vol- 
ume was the willingness of Electa Editrice, 
Milan, and in particular of Massimo Vitta- 
Zellman and of Carlo Pirovano, to allow publi- 
cation of material drawn from Boccioni: L'opera 
completa (Calvesi and Coen 1983). Odilla Marini 
of Electa helped in obtaining photographic 
material. 

Giuliano Briganti encouraged me with valu- 
able advice. I am grateful to Maurizio Calvesi, 
who initiated me into the study of Umberto 
Boccioni; to Zeno Birolli for his useful sugges- 
tions; and to Angelica Zander Rudenstine and 
Robert Rosenblum for their generous support. 
I owe a special debt to the late Giuseppe Sprovieri, 
an unforgettable participant in the Futurist years. 

Particular gratitude is also due to Giuseppe 
and Licia Dal Pian Boccioni, members of the 
artist's family; to Massimo Carrà; to Vittoria, 
Ala, and Luce Marinetti, to Gina Severini, 
and to Angelo Calmarmi for making docu- 
mentary material available; and to Luciano 
Pollini for giving me photographic material. 

My personal thanks go to Bruno Bottai 
for his active support of this exhibition. 

I am grateful to Paolo Baldacci, Amalia 
D'Asaro, Filippo Carpi de' Resmini, Massimo 



IX 



Di Carlo, Fiammetta Gaetani d'Aragona, Luisa 
Laureati, Massimo Simonetti, and the Studio 
AZ, Milan, for having helped me to obtain 
important loans. 

I also thank Jacqueline Adda, Rossella 
Capuzzo, Viviana Gravano, Carlotta Melocchi, 
Massimo Mininni, Paola Pacini, and Gabriele 
Stocchi. 

I am grateful for the cooperative assistance 
I was given by Evelina Borea, Soprintendente 
per i Beni Artistici e Storici di Roma; Aldo 
Ceccarelli, Soprintendente per i Beni Architet- 
tonici, Ambientali, Artistici e Storici per la 
Calabria; Filippa Aliberti Gaudioso, Soprin- 
tendente per i Beni Artistici e Storici del Veneto; 
Giovanna Scirè Nepi, Soprintendente per i Beni 
Artistici e Storici di Venezia; Antonio Paolucci, 
Soprintendente per i Beni Artistici e Storici, 
Florence; Sandra Bianca Pinto, Soprintendente 
per i Beni Artistici e Storici del Piemonte; 
Nicola Spinosa, Soprintendente per i Beni Ar- 
tistici e Storici di Napoli; Rosalba Tardito, 
Soprintendente per i Beni Artistici e Storici, 
Milan; and Giovanna Rotondi Terminiello, 



Soprintendente per i Beni Artistici e Storici 
della Liguria. 

I wish to thank the directors and the per- 
sonnel of the following libraries, in which I 
carried out my research: Staatsbibliothek, 
Berlin; California State Library, Sacramento; 
California Historical Society, San Francisco; The 
Getty Center for the History of Art and the 
Humanities, Santa Monica; Glendale Public 
Library, Glendale; San Francisco Archives, San 
Francisco; San Francisco Art Institute, San 
Francisco; University of California at Davis, The 
General Library, Davis; The Bancroft Library, 
University of California, Berkeley; The 
Museum of Modem Art Library, New York; 
The Watson Library, The Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York; The Archives of 
American Art, New York and Washington, 
D.C.; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Biblio- 
thèque du Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; 
and Biblioteca della Galleria Nazionale 
d'Arte Moderna, Rome. 

And finally I must thank Lydia Winston 
Malbin for her encouragement. 

Ester Coen 



x 



List of Lenders 



England 

Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick 

Federai Republic of Germany 
Bayerische Staatsgemàldesammlungen 

Mùnchen-Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, 

Munich 

Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal 
Italy 

Assitalia-Le Assicurazioni d'Italia, Rome 
Automobile Club d'Italia, Rome 
Banca Commerciale Italiana, Milan 
Cassa di Risparmio di Calabria e di Lucania, 
Cosenza 

Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia, Venice 

Antonio Catanese, Milan 

Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello 

Sforzesco, Milan 
Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo 

Reale, Milan 
Bruno Dai Pra, Treviso 



Loris Fontana, Milan 

Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence 

Galleria Cafiso, Milan 

Galleria dello Scudo, Verona 

Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna- 

Ca' Pesaro, Venice 
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna di Roma, Rome 
Italia Assicurazioni, Genoa 
Museo Civico di Torino-Galleria d'Arte 

Moderna, Turin 
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan 

Switzerland 

Museo Civico di Belle Arti, Lugano 
United States 

Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 
The Museum of Modem Art, New York 
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Slifka, New York 
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven 

Various anonymous lenders 



xi 



Raffaele Boccioni, the artist's father, 1903. 
Photo: Luciano Pollini. Courtesy private archive, 
Padua 



Cecilia Forlani Boccioni, the artist's mother, 1899. 
Photo: Luciano Pollini. Courtesy private archive, 
Padua 



Umberto Boccioni as a young child. 

Photo: Luciano Pollini. Courtesy private archive, 

Padua 



Xll 



Umberto Boccioni 



Umberto Boccioni was born in Reggio Calabria on October 19, 1882. His family was from 
the Romagna region in Northern Italy, but his father, a minor government employee, was 
never posted in one place for long. Soon after the boy's birth (he had an older sister, 
Amelia), the family moved to Forlì in the Romagna, then to Genoa on the western coast, 
and later to Padua on the other side of the peninsula. In 1897, at fifteen, Umberto followed 
his father to Catania in Sicily, where he finished his schooling — presumably irregular and 
varying in quality because of the family's many moves — and began to develop an interest in 
literature. After 1898 he settled in Rome to attend courses in drawing at the Scuola Libera 
del Nudo. 

Boccioni's Roman years are stili poorly documented, but some episodes can be 
reconstructed from Tutta la vita di un pittore (1948-68), the autobiography written by Gino 
Severini (1883-1966). The two young artists were introduced by another young painter, 
Basilici, about 1900 during a musical evening at the Villa Borghese. They shared the same 
sense of rebellion and the thirst for new knowledge and for direct experiences: "We agreed, 
evidently, on ali points, and on Nietzsche especially our enthusiasms were the same." 

At the time, as Severini recalled more than four decades later, their reading was 
oriented toward a humanitarian socialismi "Books and pamphlets by Karl Marx, Bakunin, 
Engels, Labriola. . . . The relationship between the artist and society didn't interest us much; 
nevertheless the general Marxist principle, according to which 'man is the product of his 
environment,' drove us if not to become formally interested in politics, at least to accept its 
influence, in the socialist and communist forms that were beginning to be taken seriously. 
One should keep in mind that we were living in a period of social upheaval, of demands and 
class struggle, of strikes put down with violence, and we fully experienced ali of this with 
the enthusiasm of youth, the desire for 'social justice,' and with the deep emotional sympa- 
thy for the oppressed and indignation toward the rulers so characteristic of young people. " 

It was in that frame of mind that Boccioni announced to his mother in a letter of 
March 9, 1901, that he had composed an "epico-historico-erotico-tragicomic poem 
carcereide" [from carcere, prison] and a story in three chapters titled Sufferings of the 
Soul. Further, he proclaimed himself an "atheistical-skeptical-materialistical philosopher." 
In that same vein of mingled irony and outrage that would always mark him, he wrote 
a mock denunciation of the art of the past to his friend: "Dear Signor Severini, I give you 
this comforting news: In Rome, in the other cities of Italy, and Abroad, public meetings 
are being held requesting permission to throw into the Tiber and into the similar rivers of 
other cities ali of the Madonnas existing in the museums and churches. . . . As for myself, I 




Umberto Boccioni, studies from Rubens and Umberto Boccioni, 1904. 

Hals(?), 1902-1903. Photo: Luciano Pollini. Photo: Electa Editrice, Milan 

Courtesy private collection, Padua 



swear to you . . . that I await trembling and sighing this high manifestation of contem- 
porary mystic art" (September 2, 1902). 

That sanie expressive violence and will to revolutionize the present that characterize 
Boccioni's youthful literary efforts are stili found eight years later in the Manifesto of Futurist 
Painters (February 11, 1910): "Out with you, then, bought-and-sold restorers of hack paint- 
ings! Out with you, archaeologists infected with chronic necrophilia! Out, critics, you 
complaisant panderers! Out, gouty academics, besotted and ignorant professors! Out!" 

Boccioni's impetuosity, intellectual liveliness, and criticai and rebellious spirit con- 
tributed substantially to the formation of the Futurist group. A group of sketches recently 
discovered among his papers shows the young Boccioni, eager to explore and learn and 
endowed with a deeply analytic spirit. He made dozens of studies after earlier paintings 
(copies from Pontormo, Rubens, and Leonardo) and dozens of studies of nudes in academic 
poses. These show that his rebellion and revolution against past and present had a precise 
foundation: thorough knowledge of earlier art and a methodical study of past forms. 

4 'In the meantime Boccioni, who had a nose for persons of real worth," reports 
Severini, "had discovered Balla, only recently back from Paris and fully imbued with the 
ideas of Impressionism. It was Giacomo Balla, once he became our teacher, who initiated us 
into the new modem technique of 'Divisionism' without teaching us its fundamental rules. 
Giacomo Balla was an absolutely serious man, deeply reflective. ... a painter in the broadest 
sense of the word. Following the example of the French painters, he had a single-minded 
love of nature, demanding from it ali inspiration, even to excess. If an old shoe was lying in 



xiv 



Umberto Boccioni, study from Pontormo, 
1902-1903. Private collection. 
Photo: Electa Editrice, Milan 



Umberto Boccioni, Ciociara, 1904. 
Private collection 



a landscape he would bave painted that too. . . . Balla painted with separate and contrasting 
colors, like the French painters; his 'pictorial quality' was first-rate, genuine, something like 
the material and quality of a Pissarro. It was a great stroke of luck for us to meet such a 
man, whose direction was decisive for ali our careers. The atmosphere of Italian painting 
at that moment was the foulest and most harmful imaginable." 

Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) was then best known in Roman art circles as a portraitist. 
A very refmed painter, he learned from the French Post-Impressionists to divide his colors 
into minuscule, superimposed brushstrokes and to apply that technique to isolated frag- 
ments of reality, distorting the composition with highly personal, camera-like foreshorten- 
ings. In Balla's studio Severini and Boccioni learned from the more expert artist "truthfulness 
of method, Divisionism, study from life without preconceptions, and that love for the 
hostility of the public that would later unite us in the Futurist struggle." 

At times Boccioni expressed a desire to break away from Balla's stili too realistic 
painting: "His work was impersonal and solitary, of an almost mystical severity. We young 
ones — Sironi, Boccioni, Severini — were drawntohim" (unpublished article, 1916). 
He did, however, value Balla's judgment. On September 7, 1902, he wrote to Severini: 
"I feel for landscape what I would almost cali a fever. I dream only of large canvases and 
think only of luminous landscapes, yet I lack canvas, I lack paints, I lack good health. ... I 
took my landscape to Balla and it pleased him greatly. I asked him why he says our works 
are always going along well, and he replied that, not being able to see the originai view, he 
cannot make ali the observations called fon If he says 'Good! Good! Keep it up! Keep it up!' 



xv 



he does so because he sees progress in the choice of lines, in the coloring, and in the general 
tonality." 

Balla started the young Boccioni toward that colorism of complementaries that 
would take on ever more dramatic and violent values. And Balla transmitted to him the love 
for landscape and nature that would remain a Constant in his pictorial work . In the letter of 
September 7, 1902, quoted above, Boccioni also stated: "I remember that in matters of 
black and white, where there are no colors and the arrangement of planes must be exactly 
right and can bejudged even without knowing the model, he always has something to say," 
thus emphasizing Balla's attention to composition and arrangement of planes. These picto- 
rial elements would be exploited and even exaggerated in Boccioni's later work. But the 
young artist had not created his own stylistic language; thus few works can be securely 
placed in this period. If few dated paintings are known, there are many studies, tempera 
sketches, and publicity posters. 

Severini recalled that in Rome Boccioni 'Tived with his father in an uncle's house and 
in fact told me that his father, to second him in his desire to devote himself to art, sent him 
for lessons with one of those poster painters who defaced the city's walls around 1900. This 
pseudo-painter made him copy his horrible posters, and it was those drawings, one uglier 
than the next, that he showed me. . . . It called for neither great knowledge nor special 
intellectual capacities to see that that was a wrong path." Describing the cultural environ- 
ment in which they lived, Severini added: 4 'In Rome, where life went along blissful and 
quiet, the ones who won out were Lionne, Innocenti, Coromaldi, Arturo Noci, etc, etc. In 
that milieu of vulgarity, of banality, and of mediocrity, the severe personality of our Balla 
stood out. Following his example and in reaction to that milieu, my works and Boccioni's 
became increasingly aggressive and violent; both of us had made progress. " 

The Roman art world was stili tied to nineteenth-century formulas, and painting 
followed the general taste for a gloomy realism. In those years the Roman artists showed 
their works annually at the Società degli Amatori e Cultori. These were officiai exhibitions 
held in the society 's headquarters on Via Nazionale where the latest efforts of Italian and 
foreign artists were selected by a commission of judges. Boccioni showed there for four 
years, from 1903 to 1906. In 1905 the artists turned down by thejury organized their own 
"Salon des Refusés" in a theater lobby, and Boccioni, together with Severini, showed there 
even though one of his paintings — a self-portrait (no. 4; Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, 
New York) — had been accepted for the officiai exhibition. 

In the spring of 1906, tired of the provincial life of the Italian capital, the artist 
managed to scrape together enough money to escape to Paris. In a long letter to his mother 
and sister he described the journey, his first impressions of a new city, his sensations and 
emotions. In the small number of works he painted during his few months in Paris, his 
palette became livelier and his brushwork more assured; the structure of his work became 
more complicated, and space was represented with greater authority. 

Late in August he left for Russia on the invitation of friends he met in Paris. He 
was the guest of the Popoff family in Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad) and painted a portrait of 
Sophie Popoff. After a month's stay he went to Moscow for a few days, then to Saint 
Petersburg. In November he was in Warsaw: "Warsaw, believe me, was terrible," he wrote 
to his father on December 4, on his return to Italy. "Soldiers, guards, Cossacks, artillery 
fire, rifle fire, everything on the streets in continuous movement! Every government house 



xvi 



under guard, every corner patrolled, continuai orders to keep walking, to raise one's arms 
for frisking, etc. In four days I saw innumerable arrests, crowds, people stopped and pistol- 
whipped across the face. . . . Once when I was walking with my coat buttoned up an officiai 
shouted at me to undo myself and show myself unbuttoned. Having observed that I had 
nothing on me, he allowed me to go on. I was already able to stammer in Russian, but there 
I always spoke French, which I now can speak like Italian." 

Returning to Italy in December, Boccioni settled in Padua where his mother and 
sister were living. He soon found life in that small city suffocating, as he recorded in the 
diary he kept from January 1907 through August 1908. With almost obsessive regularity 
he questioned himself on the meaning of his painting and expressed the desire to fmd new 
forms that abandoned the modes and subjects of the past. This anxiety over things new and 
old was accompanied by a growing need to detach himself from Balla's teaching. In a letter 
to Severini written in October or November 1907, Boccioni wrote that Balla "wanted to 
stride forward without seeing that he was surrounded by a closed wall. His stopping too 
often to observe a leaf made him forget that birds were singing over his head. The clouds 
roll on and on; the butterflies chase each other and make love. . . . He catches marvelously 
that chance tone of the leaf, but his feeling rests there, circumscribed, cold, isolated. . . . His 
universe does not throb! The nostalgia for what does not exist, for what perhaps never 
existed, that will never exist, is not satisfied! You keep on both suffering and wanting even 
while you are contemplating his work: That is why he is not great, why to my mind he is on 
the wrong path!" 




The Popoff house in Tsaritsyn, 1906. 
Photo: Electa Editrice, Milan 




Umberto Boccioni, card with a self-portrait Boccioni's sister, Amelia. Photo: Luciano Pollini, 

and a drawing, ca. 1906. Photo: Luciano Pollini. Courtesy private collection, Padua 

Courtesy private collection, Padua 



Yet the break with Balla's example, with his "Divisionist verism, " would come 
about very slowly: "Balla is losing sway over me, but I am far from liberating myself 
entirely from him," Boccioni wrote in his diary on March 28, 1907. He had begun to tire 
of studies from life: "I am fed up with fields and little houses." More and more he sought 
the element of innova tion. 

There are almost daily notes in Boccioni's diaries about his working method, his 
progress, his difficulties: "I am beginning to make my eye Unger less over details, to the 
advantage of the whole." These words, written in March 1907, show him already interested 
in broadening the field of vision in his painting. In the months following his return to Padua 
he deepened his explorations, especially in Luminism; his study of the fall of light and of 
chromatic combinations becomes more and more evident. 

By Aprii 1907 Boccioni was in Venice; there he made his first tentati ve experiments 
in etching, and he also thought more deeply about bringing to art new formai solutions: "In 
the work of art the veristic details, I would say, are nothing else than the point of contact, 
the bridge the artist places between his idea and the world. At that point everyone under- 
stands, though in their own fashion, so that little by little the artist has led everyone to 
where he wishes" (diary, June 15, 1907). In August 1907 he decided to settle in Milan; the 
possibility of a second visit to Russia evaporated, and he rushed off first to Brescia and 
then for a few days in September to Munich, where he visited the Sezession exhibition. 
In October he spent a week in Paris and saw an exhibition of Italian Divisionist painting 
which greatly impressed him. 



xviii 



On his return to Milan he began a new period of experimentation, as the pages of his 
diary testify. Here we read of his diffìculties in translating his ideas into images: "I do not 
know how to transfer a literary or philosophical vision into a pictorial one. Yesterday I was 
struck by a doubt as to whether I had lost my love for color, since I am always falling back 
on drawing and neglecting the brushes. I also try this however: I don't think I want to make 
use of color except in things of great importance. The little impressions come to my eyes 
only as drawing" (September 27, 1907). 

Early in March of 1908, while working on his portrait of Signora Massimino (no. 
19), the troubled young artist visited Gaetano Previati (1852-1920), one of the most inter- 
esting proponents of Italian Divisionism. Of Ferrarese birth, Previati had a passion for the 
study of light. In the last decade of the nineteenth century he had already arrived at a studied 
"division" of luministic texture into filament-like signs, mostly in monochrome. His desire 
to transform paint into an ethereal substance led him to set down his theories in several 
books: La tecnica della pittura (1905), Iprincipii scientifici del Divisionismo (1906), and Tecnica ed 
Arte (1913). Boccioni was particularly struck by La tecnica della pittura and by the way in 
which Previati had resolved his theoretical idealism in his paintings. Boccioni turned to 
Previati in an effort to discover new ways out of Balla's brand of Divisionism; he de- 
tached himself increasingly from Realism, seeking to arrive at a broader general vision. In 
an article Boccioni wrote a few months before his death, he remarked: "Previati is the only 
great Italian artist who has conceived of art as a representation in which visual reality serves 
only as a point of departure. Only this great artist had the intuition, more than thirty years 
ago, that art was escaping from Realism to elevate itself into style. He is greater than 
Segantini, who, in a somewhat elementary pantheism, had intuited the need for firmness in 
style but had sought it in perfection of execution, in analysis. . . . Gaetano Previati was the 
precursor in Italy of the idealist revolution that today is routing out realism and documented 
study from life. He has intuited that style commences when the conception is built upon 
vision. But while his vision has renewed itself in modernism, the conception, like a skele- 
ton, remains in the old material elaborated by the Italian Renaissance" (Gli Avvenimenti, 
March 26, 1916). 

In 1907-1908 Boccioni showed in the annual exhibitions sponsored by the Permanente 
and the Famiglia Artistica in Milan . In these years he retraveled the paths of Symbolism and 
Divisionism in an effort to fìnd a different formai solution for his ideas. Besides Previati's 
Divisionist painting, Boccioni studied the graphic art of Aubrey Beardsley with its curvilin- 
ear design and strong contrasts of black and white; he experimented also with a palette of 
thick and full-bodied paint, an Expressionist matrix. He turned to Previati and Edvard 
Munch in the hope of freeing himself from expressive modes linked with the past. Munch 
represented the quality of inward analysis, which offered a formai solution to his restless 
thoughts. Boccioni knew the Norwegian artist 's work as early as 1904 from the nine litho- 
graphs in the Amatori e Cultori exhibition, to which he himself had contributed a painting. 
But only in the beginning of 1907 did the young Italian approach a solution of more 
Northern stamp than anything he had attempted so far. This brought a more complicated 
vision into his design, transforming its linearism into a sinuous curvature of lines and 
weighting his colorism. The Dream is the most evident example of this passing phase: The 
entwined bodies of Paolo and Francesca turn and twist in a spasmodic embrace above an 
undefined magma wherein rise the faces of the damned, distorted by a hopeless suffering. 



xix 



Boccioni would persist in this vein until 1910. Mouming represented his last and most 
successful attempt at an advanced Expressionism. The drama of the subject is charged with 
a profound rawness, in both the sudden stabs of bright reds and yellows in the flowers and 
hair and the desperate deformation of the faces drowned in pain, repeated in a deliberately 
seething black background. This venture into an Expressionist approach would continue 
to develop in later works where strange visions and implacable torments reappear. 

Boccioni's encounter with Futurism carne after long years of study and private 
clarification of artistic problems. After an early phase of painting in a neo-Impressionist 
technique, broken up here and there by sudden brushstrokes that were more Expressionist 
in character, he took to distorting his forms through violent colors at the start of 1910. The 
influences on him were then stili diverse: His search oscillated between the polished luminism 
of Impressionism and the coloristic and formai solutions of Expressionism. 

Sometime between late 1909 and early 1910 Boccioni met Filippo Tommaso Mari- 
netti (1876-1944), the first formulator of Futurism, a movement that was originally literary 
but would come to embrace the visual arts, music, theater, dance, cinema, and even, eventu- 
ally, politics, mathematics, and cooking. For the young artist uncertain of his way, acquaint- 
ance with this polished, worldly, and highly verbal gentleman-firebrand was a fundamental 
step toward the creation of an art liberated from traditional formulas. In his autobiography, 
La mia vita, Carlo Carrà (1881-1966) recalled: "Boccioni, Russolo, and I met Marinetti, 
who was then living in Via Senato. Who could have supposed that so many things would 
have come out of that meeting? None of us had the remotest perception of what would 
happen. We were brought into a sitting room luxuriously adorned with rich Persian carpets, 
where Marinetti welcomed us most effusively and cordially. After a lengthy examination of 
the situation of art in our country we decided to launch a manifesto to young Italian artists, 
inviting them to shake off the lethargy that choked every legitimate aspiration. The next 
morning Boccioni, Russolo, and I got together in a café at Porta Vittoria, near where we ali 
lived, and with great enthusiasm we sketched out a pian for our appeal. Drawing up the 
definitive version proved rather laborious: We three worked ali day, and that evening, 
together with Marinetti and his friend Decio Cinti, secretary of the group, we completed it 
in ali its parts, and got Bonzagni and Romani to sign it, then we turned the text over to the 
printer. Distributed in several thousand copies a few days later, that cry of bold and open 
rebellion had the effect of a violent discharge of electricity in the drab artistic sky of our 
country." 

Aldo Palazzeschi, a young writer who took part in the birth of literary Futurism but 
soon broke with it because of disagreements with Marinetti, described the events: "In 
January of 1910 Umberto Boccioni introduced himself to Marinetti in his house on Via 
Senato in Milan, accompanied by Carlo Carrà and Luigi Russolo, with the intent of associ- 
ating themselves with the poets' movement, and on the following February 11 the manifesto 
of Futurist painters appeared which Boccioni himself would read on the evening of March 
8 at the Politeama Chiarella in Turin. On the following Aprii 1 1 the Technical Manifesto of 
Futurist Painting appeared. . . . The first manifesto was also signed by two other painters, 
Aroldo Bonzagni and Romolo Romani, who then refused to subscribe to the second; Boccioni, 
speaking with lovable generosity of his apostate colleagues, declared in his book: 'More 
than courage, it called for heroism and an unrestrained patriotism to join with Futurism 
then, surrounded with ferocious hatreds, the vilest calumnies, and every sort of hostility,' 



xx 



almost as if wishing to excuse their weakness by fìnding some justification for their refusai." 

Gino Severini presented his own account: "After Boccioni returned from Russia I 
very rarely had news of him, so I was most happy to get his letter in, I think, 1910. In it he 
spoke to me about Futurism and Marinetti; my friend Lugné-Poè, director of the Théàtre de 
l'Oeuvre, had entertained me several times about Marinetti, because his Roi Bombarne had 
been presented at that very theater. But of Futurism as a collective movement I knew 
nothing. Boccioni in his letter wrote about it with much enthusiasm, then told me of his 
project, to create in Italy an analogous movement for painting. Indeed, at that time a first 
manifesto had already been issued, signed by Boccioni and by other Italian artists I did not 
know. He wrote me several letters to keep me up to date, and because I had spoken of the 
matter with various Italian friends (Commetti, Bucci, etc.) he gave me the delicate task of 
selecting those who, to my mind, could join the group. He put it to me this way: 'Dear 
Gino, I am writing to ask you secretly (!) your judgment of who can sign our manifesto. . . . 
We have full confidence in your judgment. But I must warn you that the signers must be 




F. T. Marinetti, Carlo Carrà, Umberto Boccioni, and 
Luigi Russolo, ca. 1912-13. Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan 



Gino Severini, Paris, ca. 1910-11. Photo: Paolo 
Pellegrin. Courtesy Severini archive, Rome 



young men absolutely convinced of what the manifesto asserts. Adherence must be com- 
plete and without mental reservations. What we need is those intellectuals who would make 
up the complete Futurist to join themselves together around an absolute faith in congenital 
complementarism. Wanted are young men (and there are few of them) with faith and a secure 
selfless devotion; men of culture and action and who in their works, uncertain as those may 
be, may aspire to that fullness of perfection that marks the luminous path of the ideal/" 

Severini put his name to the Manifesto of Futurist Painting which is dated February 1 1 , 
1910. His and Balla's signatures replaced those of Bonzagni and Romani who had deserted 
the group. The manifesto proclaimed itself a violent denunciation of ali the outworn rub- 
bish that had become nested in Italian art. Boccioni so identified himself with the shared 
faith in "rebellion" that he enthusiastically took on the part of chief agitator for the movement. 

The initial manifesto was followed by a second, dated Aprii 11, 1910, which specified 
the motives behind the rebellion and laid down a more precise programmatic line: "Gesture, 
for us, will no longer be a single moment within the universal dynamism brought to a sudden 
stop: It will be, outrightly, dynamic sensation given permanent form. Everything is in move- 
ment, everything rushes forward, everything is in Constant swift change. A figure is never 
stable in front of us but is incessantly appearing and disappearirig. Because images persist on 
the retina, things in movement multiply, change form, follow one another like vibrations 
within the space they traverse. Thus a horse in swift course does not have four legs: It has 
twenty, and their movements are triangular." 

Another passage — which Boccioni asserted he had written — is fundamental to an 
understanding of the style and pictorial ideas of the Futurists: "The sixteen people you have 
around you in a tram in rapid motion are one, ten, four, three; they stand in place and at the 
same time are in movement; they go and come, are projected out into the Street and swal- 
lowed up by a patch of sunlight, then suddenly are back in their seats: perduring symbols of 
the universal vibration. And at times it happens that, on the cheek of the person we are 
speaking with in the Street, we see a horse that passes by a good way off. Our bodies enter 
into the very sofas we sit on and the sofas themselves enter into us, in the same way as the 
passing tram enters into the houses which, in their turn, hurl themselves on the tram and 
become one with it. The way pictures are constructed is stupidly traditional. Painters have 
always shown us things and persons as if set directly in front of us. We however will put the 
viewer himself in the center of the picture. " 

The violence of these literary images and the precision of intent found no direct 
application in the language of painting: Boccioni himself was stili caught up in the investi- 
gations on which he had been working for years. It was only in the summer of 1910 that he 
began to paint The City Rises (no. 50), the first canvas in which he would succeed in 
working out and applying his ideas on movement, light, and color. In the spring of that 
year, however, he had exhibited a number of pastels and drawings in the annual Famiglia 
Artistica show. Another participant was Luigi Russolo (1885-1947) who later wrote: "I met 
Boccioni one evening in Milan, at the Famiglia Artistica. It was in 1909. He was wearing a 
Russian fur hat, knee-high boots, a short topcoat with a broad fur collar. He could have been 
taken for a Russian. He had in fact only recently arrived from Russia and had traveled over 
much of it, venturing as far as the steppe of the Kirghizes! His clothing attracted attention, 
his eyes and expression attracted sympathy. We introduced ourselves. We found that our 
ideas were much alike, our artistic ideals very dose; an equal hatred for things already done, 



xxu 



warmed up again, for the commonplaces of art, brought us immediately into dose contact. 
We became friends, truly friends. One evening in front of a large poster announcing a 
Futurist manifestation we both commented with admiration on the courageous work Mari- 
netti was carrying out for literature, and Boccioni said: 'We need something like that for 
painting.' 

"A few days later, having met Marinetti in person, I expressed to him exactly the 
desire that some action like the one he was carrying out for literature and poetry should also 
be undertaken for painting. Marinetti, with the lively enthusiasm that characterized him, 
not only approved the idea but invited us to write down our ideas about painting as quickly 
as possible, pledging himself to publish them and launch them! So was born the manifesto 
of Futurist painters and the joining of the painters— Boccioni, Balla, Carrà, Russolo, and 
Severini — to the Futurist movement, which until then had been only literary." 

In July 1910 Boccioni exhibited forty-two works in the summer show at Ca' Pesaro 
in Venice, including the Stage Directress, Morning (no. 36), Twilight (no. 37), Gisella (no. 15), 
The Old Woman (no. 7), and the self-portrait with a fur hat (no. 20). Marinetti later wrote: 
"With the venturesome and restless spirit of a fighter he wandered over the world trying 
out innumerable paths, was active in anarchist and revolutionary circles, was attracted in 
turn by violent action and the dream, before making up his mind to devote himself to 
painting. ... In ali his exhibited works Boccioni, marvelously endowed with what the 
Futurists would later cali congenital complementarism, went on developing his diligent and 
victorious choices of a maximum of light and a maximum of pictorial dynamism." The 
Futurists had affirmed in their first manifesto that motion and light destroy the material 
solidity of bodies, and Boccioni tried to apply that programmale declaration in his works. 

In the months following the Venice exhibition he worked frantically toward a new 
definì tion of space in painting, in which the perspective was based on chromatic juxtaposi- 
tions and on deformation of bodies in movement. Space explodes and fragments in a kalei- 
doscopic vision; color takes on new values, becoming more somber, harsh, and pure, a 
formai motif in itself. 

Dynamic form and spatiality were amalgamated in a synthesis with color, analyzed 
and studied in new combinations of complementaries, tonai contrasts, and expressionistic 
deformations. 

At the Permanente in Milan from July 24 to August 12 Boccioni exhibited a portrait 
and the much praised lyrically luminous Three Women (no. 41) of 1909-1910. But by that 
December the paintings he sent to the Famiglia Artistica exhibition in Milan — among 
them Baruffa and Mourning — showed that his art had undergone an extraordinary evolution. 
In March 1911 in an interview in the newspaper // Panaro the artist said: "I move always 
ahead; I go forward always in continuai struggle with myself to liberate myself from objec- 
tive fact and arrive at an entirely spiritual expression: In me is the ultimate aspiration to try 
to reproduce the object as a sensation." The interviewer noted: "The art of Umberto 
Boccioni has never truly and properly succeeded— in the usuai ways — but for him true 
success consists of the lively discussions his pictures have aroused and the polemics that go 
on around his name and his work." 

Boccioni painted movement as a powerful vortex — the frenzied churning of modem 
urban life — in The City Rises; he expanded himself with the irrepressible hilarity of the harlot 
in The Laugh (no. 53), the entangled scintillation and chaos in Riot in the Galleria (no. 49). 



These and other pictures were shown in Milan in the first "collective manifestation of 
Futurist art," a section of the Mostra d'Arte Libera, which opened in Aprii 1911 and in 
which Russolo and Carrà also took part. The promoters' statement of purpose — Boccioni 
was among the signers — proclaimed that an exhibition has "the duty to welcome ali the 
artist's personal expressions, from the most humble and infantile dream of a child to the 
most complex manifestations of a genius 's maturity." Among the four hundred works on 
display, those of the Futurists caused the greatest sensation. Nino Barbantini, then director 
of the Museo d'Arte Moderna in Ca' Pesaro in Venice, wrote that while the exhibition was 
"useless and meaningless, worthy of note are the works by Umberto Boccioni and Carlo 
Dalmazzo Carrà." It was Barbantini, the critic who had invited Boccioni to show in Venice 
nine months earlier, who now perceived in the artist's work a new maturity and develop- 
ment: "In his restless aspiration to test new and daring spaces, to represent originai visions 
in unusual forms evading conventions, he brings a youthfulness and exuberance that cannot 
fail to arouse warm sympathy in ali who consider him openly, without prejudices. Since last 
year he has made appreciable progress because, if he has lost in equilibrium and measure, he 
has gained in boldness and fervor, so much so that his works of a year ago seem almost 
awkward, timid, and even academic beside the more recent ones; but if in his extreme 
tendencies he resembles an unbridled Frenchman, he is always sustained by a seriousness in 
exploration and a solidity of preparation that reveal in him an Italian temperament. " During 
this Milanese exhibition The Laugh was damaged by a viewer who was unconvinced by the 
new forms of this "free art." 

By the end of June the important Fiorentine review La Voce published a savage 
denunciation of the Milan exhibition, signed by Ardengo Soffici. Soffici had stopped in 
Milan on his return from Paris, a city he often visited, where he had come to know the 
Cubists. He was curious about the new art which, according to its programmatic declara- 
tions, seemed determined to liberate itself from the provincialism that stifled Italian art. The 
paintings on view, Soffici wrote, "in no way represent a highly personal vision of art, as 
some intrepid newspaper scribblers may believe. No. They are on the contrary stupid and 
repugnant blusterings by unscrupulous persons who, taking a gloomy view of the world, 
with no poetic feeling, through the eyes of some thick-skinned American pig farmer, want 
us to believe they see it flowering and flaming; and they think that by slapping colors madly 
onto a picture worthy of academic janitors, or by dragging back into the limelight the nasty 
strings of Divisionism — that moribund error alla Segantini — they can put their game across 
in the eyes of the foolish mob." 

Stung by this violent attack, the Futurists decided to go to Florence to organize a 
punitive expedition against Soffici. They had already participated in various public demon- 
strations which ended in uproar — in May Boccioni had declared to a conference that soon 
the traditional picture would have no point or purpose, that colored gases would replace 
traditional colors and the hues would be perceived as sentiments. Carrà later described the 
Fiorentine episode: "We were guided by Palazzeschi to the Caffè delle Giubbe Rosse where 
we knew we would find the Voce crowd. Indeed, right away Soffici was pointed out to us, 
and Boccioni addressed him abruptly: 'Are you Ardengo Soffici?' A hearty slap followed the 
affirmative reply, Soffici reacting energetically with right and left blows of his cane. In no 
time the pandemonium became hellish: Little tables loaded with glasses and coffee cups 
were overturned, bystanders fled screaming, waiters carne running to restore order." The 



xxiv 



brawl finally calmed down, and, after the two groups set forth their respective ideas, the 
Florentines, led by Soffici, joined the Futurists. 

It was now decided to make Futurism known outside Italy, and Marinetti made 
contacts with the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. An exhibition scheduled for the end of 
1911 had to be postponed because Marinetti was in Libya as a war correspondent. Carrà and 
Boccioni went to Paris on their own to investigate the atmosphere and the state of the art. 
Their guide in Paris was Severini: "It is impossible to imagine their joy, their surprise and 
amazement at discovering a world of art of which they hadn't the remotest idea. I took 
them to my neighbors', then to Picasso's, and then everywhere modem painting and paint- 
ers were to be seen. The life of Paris itself made them ecstatic. They were very unhappy at 
having to leave, but they departed brought up-to-date, rich with priceless notions and 
visions, and their thanks to me were not sparing. The visit to Paris made an enormous 
impression on Boccioni, perhaps even greater than on Carrà and Russolo. I must say that 
thanks to my hospitality, he was able to remain eight or ten days after the others left and 
became better acquainted with the artistic circles I frequented." 

During that visit Boccioni met Guillaume Apollinare and told him he had painted 
two pictures expressing and representing states of mind, the essence of a feeling transcribed 
into image. In an article in the Mercure de France Apollinare alluded to the episode that had 
taken place in Florence between the Futurists and the Voce writers, and the hard-hitting 
tactics they had used "pourforcer Vadmiration" to ensure their admiration; ironically he 
added: "In May 1912 the Futurists will exhibit in Paris. No doubt, if they want to resort to 
the same arguments, they will have their hands full at that time." 

Boccioni's Paris visit permitted him to judge at first hand the Cubist aesthetic of 
Picasso and Braque, of whom he knew something from the news in Severini's letters and 
from Soffici's article on them in La Voce in August. The difference between the Cubist and 
Futurist approaches would be a major topic in the preface to the Italian group's catalogue for 
their Paris exhibition. 

While the Cubists'method of disintegrating the image doubtless impressed 
Boccioni, this type of analysis would not fmd an application in his own painting. In Cubism 
the formai element and the will to reconstruct the image is preponderant over the other 
aspects of representation; for Boccioni, vision was based above ali on the complementary 
quality of colors and on the relationship of the objects with their surroundings. The preface 
to the exhibition catalogue, signed by the "Futurist quintet" but largely written by Boccioni, 
contained an attack on the Cubists and their undynamic vision of reality: "They obstinately 
continue to paint objects motionless, frozen, and ali the static aspects of Nature. . . . To 
paint from the posing model is an absurdity, and an act of mental cowardice, even if the 
model be translated upon the picture in linear, spherical or cubie forms. To lend an allegori- 
cal significance to an ordinary nude figure, deriving the meaning of the picture from the 
objects held by the model or from those which are arranged about him, is to our mind the 
evidence of a traditional and academic mentality." 

In the same preface the new Futurist aesthetic was revealed: "In order to make the 
spectator live in the centre of the picture, as we express it in our manifesto, the picture must 
be a synthesis of what one remembers and of what one sees. " 

In the pictures Boccioni exhibited in Paris — the three States of Mind (no. 56), The 
Laugh y Modem Idol (no. 55), Simultaneous Visions (no. 57), The Street Enters into the House, 



xxv 



The Strengths of a Street (no. 58), The Roundup — he succeeded in transposing his theoretical 
discussions from the linguistic piane to the piane of imagery. Fractured, shattered, and 
refracted, the representation took the form of a luminous vortex. The planes intersected 
according to the contrasts of forces internai to the image itself: "If we paint the phases of a 
riot, the crowd bristling with fists and the noisy attacks of the mounted police are translated 
onto the canvas in bundles of lines that correspond to ali the forces in conflict according to 
the laws of the overall violence of the picture. These force-lines must envelop and sweep 
along the viewer who will be in some way obliged to struggle himself with the personages 
in the picture. Ali the objects, in accord with physical transcendentalism, tend toward the 
infinite by way of their force-lines, whose continuity is gauged by our intuition. It is we 
who must draw these force-lines if we are to bring back the work of art to true painting. We 
interpret nature by giving these lines on the canvas as the beginnings or prolongations of the 
rhythms that the objects imprint on our sensibility. " 

The Paris exhibition was received coldly by the critics. Apollinaire reviewed it in 
LTntransigeant on February 7 and singled out Boccioni's superiority over the other Futurists. 
But at the same time he emphasized the dependence of this pictorial form on that of the 
French: "Picasso's influence is thus undeniable, as it is on ali contemporary painting. Boccioni's 
best canvas is the one most directly inspired by Picasso's latest works. It does not even lack 
those numerals in printing type which bring in such a simple and grandiose reality. . . . The 
young Futurist painters can hold their own with some of our avant-garde artists, but so far 
they are only feeble pupils of a Picasso or a Derain and as for charm, they have no idea what 
that is." 

Marinetti wished to spread Futurism on an international level, and the exhibition, 
thanks to his skill as an organizer, moved from Paris to the Sackville Gallery in London in 
March 1912. There the composer-pianist Ferruccio Busoni purchased Boccioni's The City 
Rises. The following month the exhibition opened in Berlin, in Herwarth Walden's re- 
nowned Galerie Der Sturm. Boccioni wrote from Berlin to his fellow Futurists at home: 
"Dear Carrà, The exhibition opened this morning with the city ali white with snow. The 
visitors were very few compared with what I saw in Paris and London. The cause of it ali: 
the bad weather, the people unenthusiastic over artistic events, and, I fear, the organizer 
being a journalist and therefore the friend or enemy of the whole lot of journalists, and so of 
the only means of publicity in cases like ours." 

Boccioni continued: "While these days my entire being feels the need and urgency of 
construction, I am prepared to sacrifice anything if I can deepen in myself the new concep- 
tion of things which is brought out, incidentally or deliberately, in many works of the 
younger avant-garde and which we have not intuited in the dark depths of Milan. Marinetti 
says I am inclined to exaggerate the worth of others. But I cannot deny myself the pleasure 
of considering the work of certain young Frenchmen as excellent and of declaring to myself 
that Picasso is an extraordinary talent, but that they lack everything I myself see and feel, 
and because of that I believe and hope I will soon surpass them." 

A large number of works were sold in Berlin, and in May the exhibition was moved 
to Brussels. A series of traveling shows organized by Walden took off from Berlin and were 
seen from July to October in Hamburg, The Hague, Amsterdam, Munich, Budapest, and 
Prague. 

Meanwhile Boccioni was both deepening and broadening his conception of dyna- 



xxvi 





W 11 1 KPOLLINAmi 



Louis Marcoussis, Guillaume Apollinare , 
1912-20. The Museum of Modem Art, 
New York 



Umberto Boccioni, caricature of Carlo 
Carrà, 1910. Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan 



mism. Around 1912 he tried his hand for the first time at working in three dimensions. On 
March 15, 1912, he wrote to his friend Vico Baer: "These days I am obsessed by sculpture! I 
believe I have glimpsed a complete renovation of that mummified art." Less than a month 
later, on Aprii 11, the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture appeared, signed "Umberto 
Boccioni, painter and sculptor." In it he aimed his blows at traditional sculpture, above 
ali for its inability to create new forms and free itself from the "traditional concept of 
sculptural form." 

"As point of departure," he went on, "we must proceed from the centrai nucleus of 
the object we wish to create, and from that basis discover the new laws — that is, the new 
forms — that link it invisibly but mathematically to the visible plastic infinite and to the inner 
plastic infinite. That new plastic art will therefore involve translating the atmospheric planes 
that link and intersect things into plaster, bronze, glass, wood, and any other material one 
may wish. " He gave a rallying cry, proclaiming "the absolute and total abolition of the finite and 
of the statue complete in itself Let us fling open the figure and let it incorporate within itself 
whatever may surround it." The artist went on to develop his theories, steadily realizing the 
ideas set forth in his manifesto. A group of sculptures was created — Head + House + Light, 
Head + Window, Antigrazioso , Empty and Full Abstracts of a Head — at the same time as he 
completed a new series of paintings notably influenced by Cubism; he would show the 
sculptures at the Galene La Boétie in Paris from June 20 to July 16, 1913. 



xxvii 



In January 1913 the first number of a new fortnightly review, Lacerba, carne out; it was 
founded by the writers Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici and printed in Florence. Lacerba 
would contain the most ferocious polemics between the Futurists and the former writers for 
La Voce. Soon afterward in Rome, on February 11, the "First Exhibition of Futurist Paint- 
ing" opened in the foyer of the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Boccioni exhibited new paintings 
— Matter (no. 60), Elasticity (no. 69), Decomposition of a Figure at a Table, Horizontal Volumes 
(no. 59), Antigrazioso (no. 66), and Abstract Dimensions (no. 67) — that exemplified his studies 
of the intersection of planes, of force-lines, and on decomposition of the object, principles 
he was applying at the same time to sculpture. 

The Rome exhibition became the scene of one of those stormy serate Futuriste (Futur- 
ist evenings). The newspaper La Sera reported on March 1: "The painter Boccioni was 
expected to illustrate and comment on the exhibition of pictures that expound the theories 
of the new school; however, the continuai heckling of the audience and the infernal noise of 
a few groups of merry interrupters almost totally prevented the young and bold-spirited 
orator from being heard. He avenged himself by insulting quite efficaciously the intolerable 
nonlisteners and promising punches and slaps to the lot of them." 

And in Lacerba on March 15, Giovanni Papini published a declaration "Contro il 
Futurismo," in which the Fiorentine writer, though notjoining the new movement, took a 
position favorable to it: "I am not, as I said at the start, a Futurist. But I maintain . . . that 
before condemning these young men once and for ali, before burying them under ridicule 
and a rain of ripe tomatoes, it should be the duty of every man of integrity to evaluate the 
reasons for and against. It would be only honest to read theìr theses, to try to understand 
their pictures, to examine their ideas, and to see if in this case prejudices and antipathies 
should be overcome and their worth and good intentions recognized." 

In the same issue was an article by Boccioni, "The Plastic Foundation of Futurist 
Sculpture and Painting," in which he distanced himself from Cubism: "The refuting a priori 
of a reality: Therein lies the abyss that separates us from Cubism, that puts us Futurists at 
the farthest point in world painting." 

The opposition between Futurism and Cubism exploded after Apollinaire's article on 
the subject in the Parisian review Montjoie! of March 18, 1913. Boccioni replied in Lacerba 
on Aprii 1 with an essay eloquently titled "The Futurists Plagiarized in France," insisting on 
the newness of the Futurist aesthetic, which sought to represent an object that prolongs 
itself in its environment, that is, to represent movement. Let the scoffers, he wrote, "remember 
that expansion of bodies in space as a stylization of Impressionism, that simultaneity and 
consequent compenetration of planes, that dynamism in painting and sculpture, that force- 
lines and the devout exhilaration over the new certainties of modernity — new, profound, 
unshakable — these are our ideas, created by ourselves, springing from our pure and inex- 
haustible Italian genius. They are ideas we give with great love to everyone and above ali to 
the rising young Italian painters. They are ideas which, while being plagiarized or absorbed 
for use abroad, are scoffed at in Italy with a superficiality unworthy of a great people such as 
the Italian people are becoming. " 

Later in 1913 an exhibition of Boccioni's sculpture opened at the Galerie La Boétie in 
Paris. In his preface to the exhibition catalogue the artist went deeper into the theories 
already set forth in the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture. In particular he explained the 
significance of Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (no. 88), one of his most important 



xxviii 




Umberto Boccioni, A Futurist Evening in Milan {Una serata 
juturista a Milano), 1911. On the stage are Boccioni, Balilla 
Pratella , E T. Marinetti, Carlo Carrà, and Luigi Russolo. 
Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan 



works: "To render a body in motion, I defìnitely do not present the trajectory, that is, the 
passage from one state of repose to another state of repose, but force myself to ascertain the 
form that expresses continuity in space." In reviewing the show, Apollinaire noted that 
many of the Italian artist's experiments had already been attempted by Picasso and the 
sculptor Agéro. But he did admit that there were innovations in the variety of materials and 
in the representation of the simultaneity and violence of movement. He added, however, a 
postscript: "Latest news. Rumor has it that Boccioni's 'Muscles in velocity' have run off 
with the bit between their teeth. One can't yet catch up with them." 

In September the Futurists returned to Berlin to show as a group with the leading 
avant-garde painters of Europe in the Herbstsalon, a major event organized by Walden and 
his Galene Der Sturm. Meanwhile on the home front the battle continued. In August, Carrà 
wrote his own manifesto, The Painting of Sounds, Noises, Odors. Boccioni published a series 
of articles in Lacerba including "Futurist Dynamism and French Painting" (August 1), 
"Italian Ignorance" (August 15), and "Against the Italian Artistic Cowardice" (September 
1). These were attacks on Italian indifference to the new Futurist aesthetic, together with a 
violent appeal for an all-out campaign against the provincialism pervading ali forms of art in 
Italy. His position would become more overtly politicai after the Futurist politicai manifesto 
was printed in Lacerba (October 15). Signed by Marinetti, Boccioni, Carrà, and Russolo, it 
trumpeted their total opposition to the current politicai program along with an extreme 
— even extremist — exaltation of Italian nationalism. 

Papini, the perpetuai fellow-traveler rather than partisan, wrote in a rider to the 
manifesto that he was "with" the Futurists but a bit skeptical about the originality of their 
politicai proposals; he and Marinetti were becoming increasingly opposed, finally creating a 
battle of words between Futurists and "Lacerbians" in the pages of that review. Cespite the 



xxix 



controversy Lacerba organized an exhibition at the Galleria Gonnelli in Florence where 
Boccioni showed new paintings incorporating his recent studies of dynamism. 

The concept of dynamism, as expressed by Boccioni, was different from that of the 
other Futurists, notably from that of his onetime teacher Balla. While Balla was represent- 
ing successive instants of action in space and time, playing on the rhythms set up by moving 
objects, Boccioni sought a synthetic form, a single image which could express the fusion of 
the object and its surrounding environment. He carne to think that dynamism could make 
simultaneously perceptible, and, through a strong process of abstraction, could represent 
the sensation of speed, not merely the evolution of states of motion. 

At this time Boccioni published his first parole in libertà, "words-in-freedom" or, 
better, "words set free" that Marinetti had invented. Scarpetta da società + orina (more or less, 
"dancing shoe + urine") was written as commentary to Marinetti's article on the death of 
free verse and on the typographic revolution that permitted words to be infused with the 
new dimension of velocity. Another such effort, Uomo + vallata + montagna ("man + valley 
+ mountain"), appeared in Lacerba on February 1, 1914. In the next number of that review 
Papini's article // cerchio si chiude ("The circle closes") deepened his adversarial position 
toward the Futurists and, in particular, toward Boccioni's recent activity: "It happens that, 
out of love for that art which is our only love, one may fall away from art and return to the 
utter disgrace of verisimilitude — to working from life and at first hand. It happens too that 
out of lusting for anything new at whatever cost, one may end up with something so old as 
to be older than art itself — that is, with nature in its naturai state. " 

Papini's virulent attack against Boccioni's "overly realistic" art was answered by the 
artist in the article // cerchio non si chiude ("The circle does not dose") in Lacerba on March 1: 
"The new conditions of the life we live in have created an infmity of naturai elements that 
are completely new, and therefore have never entered the domain of art; for these the 
Futurists are resolved to discover new means of expression — at any costì Thus, in the Futur- 
ist system, there is a process of destruction of the old means of expression that is parallel to 
a process of research to discover new ones. Now, dear Papini (it is painful to have to address 
these words to you, when we are fighting against everyone), when in painting, sculpture, 
words-in-freedom, and the art of noises you find the things themselves 'substituted for the 
lyrical or rational transformation of things' this does not mean that the circle is closing on 
itself. . . . It is at just that point that the circle of creative possibilities opens widest. It is the 
moment when the artist, to escape the imitative procedure that makes him fall inevitably 
into the most tired resemblances, puts himself in the place of reality. But no sooner does 
that reality enter to become part of the worked material of the piece than the lyrical purpose 
to which it is called, its position, its dimensions, the contrasts it creates, ali transform its 
objective anonymity and set it on the path toward becoming one of the worked elements." 
Indeed, he adds, to find new emotive elements it is necessary to return to reality, and as 
support for his thesis he adduces various examples of Futurist experimentation: plastic 
dyamism, words-in-freedom, "noise-music." 

This exchange closed with Papini's reply, Cerchi aperti ("Open circles"), in Lacerba 
on March 15. He called for an explanation of the "realistic use of fragments of reality in 
painting and sculpture" and pointed out that "you [Boccioni] should have explained to 
me why you did this and why you no longer do so (at least in painting), and demonstrated 
to me in what way those elements are not the naive expressions of crude and gross verism 
but enter into the work of art as new materials of expression. " 



xxx 



Some chapters of Boccioni's new book Pittura, scultura futuriste ("Futurist painting 
and sculpture") were published in the sanie issue of Lacerba together with news of his recent 
and current exhibitions, notably the show of his sculpture in Sprovieri's Galleria Futurista in 
Rome which had opened in December 1913 and which would move to the Galleria Gonnelli 
in Florence in March 1914. 

Boccioni's book, on which he had worked for an entire year, finally carne out at the 
end of February 1914, dedicated "to the genius and muscles of my brothers Marinetti Carrà 
Russolo who with me sacrificed everything for the great Futurist action, battling by day 
against the furious circle of hatreds and passéist slanders and creating during the electric 
nights of Milan and Paris the great antitraditional and dynamic avant-garde atmosphere 
which must renovate Italy and the world by goading their spiritual velocity." In seventeen 
chapters ali the ideas of Futurist aesthetics are expounded in mature and definitive form. 
The first five discuss the modifications of Futurist ideology and its relation to reality. The 
chapter titled "Why We Are Not Impressionists" traces the reasons behind the birth of an 
avant-garde art; the remaining chapters deal with Futurist language and synthesis: "Absolute 
Motion and Relative Motion," "Dynamism," "Force -Lines," "Solidification of Impres- 
sionism," "The Compenetration of Planes," "Dynamic Complementarism," "We Shall 
Place the Viewer in the Center of the Picture," "Simultaneity," and "Physical Transcenden- 
talism and Plastic States of Mind." 

The reactions to the book's publication were decidedly mixed even within the Futur- 
ist ranks; Carrà in particular resented certain of Boccioni's references to himself. In his 
autobiography Severini recalled the book's reception: "Boccioni's book, Pittura, scultura 
futuriste, had come out. This is not the place to criticize this book whose value is more 
polemical than criticai. As regards theoretical explanation, it contains ali the thinking of the 
moment, in which however that of the other Futurists is reflected. It cannot be denied that 
the Futurist theoretician who seeks to condense ali of our intentions into definitions and 
sometimes axioms is Boccioni. One needs to take into account many things that were, so to 
speak, only indistinctly intuited in Milan, an environment stili amorphous as regards art. As 
we have seen, Boccioni's contacts with a better informed and more developed artistic world 
were only too rare. On the other hand the book suffers from an insufficient cultural history. . . . 
When, by force of intuition, he arrives at a fundamental truth such as that of 'physical 
transcendentalism,' it is a truism everyone knows. Yet there are many points of view I 
would cali luminous, prismatic, which show what a fine document of the period it is, even 
if its greatest value is, as I have said, polemical." 

Severini reports Carrà's reaction: "It was in Paris that he received Boccioni's book, 
but from what I gathered from his letter it did not exactly please him; in the first place, 
according to him, at a certain point in the book Boccioni describes him as derivative of 
himself, at least theoretically speaking; and in the second place he considers it puerile, as 
Boccioni wrote, 'to base Futurist painting on his three little States of Mind pictures.' " 

And with the detachment of one recalling a happening long past, Severini remarked: 
"Today, after so much time has gone by, ali those rivalries, those megalomanias growing in 
the shade of Marinetti's megalomania, make one smile a little, the more so because the ideas 
expressed in the manifestos and in Boccioni's book, however interesting their attitudes may 
stili be, are no longer considered anything but summaries of a theory or points of departure 
for an aesthetic, and not as true and proper bases for an aesthetic. Yet later, as various ideas 
of 'avant-gardism' developed, they became again a valid stimulus and fount of creation." 



xxxi 





Carlo Carrà, Umberto Boccioni, 1916. Charcoal on paper, 
Wa X 6 3 / 4 in. (23.5 X 17.2 cm.). Collection Mr. and 
Mrs. Joseph Slifka, New York 

Umberto Boccioni, ca. 1913-14. 

Photo: Luciano Pollini. Courtesy private archive, 

Padua 



In the first half of 1914 Boccioni took part in exhibitions organized by Sprovieri in 
the Galleria Futurista in Rome (February-March 1914) and Naples (May-June 1914). Com- 
pared with his preceding paintings, the works produced at this time shine with an unusual 
liveliness and brilliant color, a denser and more full-bodied use of paint, and an ever deeper 
investigation of spatial solutions. Space in these works no longer has a dimension that 
follows specific laws of perspective; it responds instead to the laws of the object that is 
represented and of its relationship with surrounding reality. Absolute motion and relative 
motion are dynamic qualities intrinsic to the object. As Boccioni wrote, "The plastic poten- 
tiality of the object is its force, that is, its primordial psychology. This force, this primordial 
psychology, permits us to create in the picture a new subject that does not aim for a narrative 



xxxn 



reproduction of an episode but is instead the coordination of the plastic values of reality, a 
coordination purely architectonic and free from literary or sentimental influences. In that 
prime state of motion, which I explain as something separate though in reality it is not, the 
object is not seen in its relative motion but is conceived in its vi tal lines which reveal how it 
would decompose according to the tendencies of its forces. Thus we arrive at a decompo- 
sition of the object which is no longer in the Cubist formula but is rather the very look of 
the object, its interpretation by way of an infinitely refined sensation superior to that of old 
art. 

Elsewhere in his book Boccioni clarifies his concept of velocity: "A horse in move- 
ment is not a stationary horse that moves but a horse in movement, which is something else, 
which must be conceived and expressed as something completely different. It means that 
objects in movement must be conceived otherwise than in the movement they have within 
themselves. This means finding a form that will be the expression of this new absolute: 
Speed, which is a truth no genuinely modem temperament can ignore. It means the study 
of the aspects life has assumed in velocity and in the consequent simultaneity. " 

In the works of this period Boccioni arrived at an unprecedented abstraction, which 
did not exclude the recognizability of the subject in its lines of dynamic tension, because, in 
his words, "Dynamic form is a kind of fourth dimension in painting and sculpture that does 
not take on real life without the full affirmation of the three dimensions that determine the 
volume: height, width, depth." This group of pictures already shows evidence of a return 
to Cubist formai analysis which, by the end of 1914, would lead Boccioni to paint accord- 
ing to the principles laid down by Cézanne. 

In the spring of 1914 Boccioni went to Paris for a few days. He was passing through a 
period of grave crisis that would persist for a number of months. On July 19 he wrote to 
Emilio Cecchi, a literary figure of some importance: "I feel myself overmuch alone . . . and 
incredulity and diffidence leave me perplexed. There are moments when I don't understand 
the reason for the battle and ask myself a thousand things I would say aloud with great 
joy . . . but in a letter they irritate me. The long hours at the writing table working on the 
book have left me almost nauseated with theoretical exposition." 

The First World War began in early August. In September Boccioni took part in 
demonstrations against Austria and in favor of Italian intervention in the war. He was 
arrested along with Marinetti, a not unexpected turn of events as a letter of September 16 to 
his family makes clear: "You have surely read that, from a box in the [Teatro] Dal Verme 
during a gala performance yesterday evening, I ripped up an Austrian flag and Marinetti 
waved the Italian. Tonight we will begin again. Perhaps they will arrest us for a few hours. 
It is necessary." And then, referring to his mood, he added: "It's the usuai thing. I am not 
working. I am going through a period of great cairn." 

By the start of 1915, however, Boccioni was back at work. At the end of March he 
wrote to Cecchi: "I am working fairly well, and you? I am in any case very happy and full of 
material for construction. Let us hope. Construction . . . that is the word that terrorizes 
those poor powerless sansculottes." 

In July he enlisted in the Volunteer Cyclists' Battalion. There is a chronicle of this 
period in the pages his fellow volunteer Marinetti wrote a few months later for La Gazzetta 
dello Sport: "Milan adores her sons, and in truth the Lombard Volunteer Cyclists' Battalion 
contained the best of her sons, of every age from seventeen to fifty, the very ones who, 



xxxiii 




xxxiv 



coming from ... the most diverse groups — studènts, monarchists, revolutionary workers, 
lawyers and clerks, poor men and millionaires, traditional painters and poets, avant-gardists, 
semi-Futurists, and Futurists — had already met each other in Piazza del Duomo and in the 
Galleria almost every evening, during the winter and spring, to exchange punches and put 
the neutralists to flight." 

At the start of the Great War Italy was neutral. The majority of the population 
favored maintaining a nonbelligerent status. The neutralist ranks were made up mostly of 
Catholics, socialists, and liberals who followed the policy of the prime minister, Giolitti. 
Those declaring themselves in favor of entering the war were the conservatives and the 
nationalists, the latter with hopes that intervention might put Italy in a position of greater 
economie and politicai expansion. The Italian government, after long diplomatic negotia- 
tions with the countries of the Entente (Britain, France, and Russia), declared war against 
the Axis power s in May 1915. 

Boccioni's expressive energies found an outlet in the direct experience of combat at 
the front. The war diary he kept between August and December of 1915 records in tele- 
graphic language his impressions of life in the trenches: "Hunger fatigue nervousness"; 
"Reveille, cold! cold! cold? Some of us exhausted or near so. Sironi doing very badly. A 
corporal has to go down ffrom their mountain position] sick. A lieutenant in the Alpines [a 
regiment] arrives with letters. Having won a trench they ask what we are doing. Monticelli 
replies that attack for our side means a massacre. . . . Another Alpine arrives, then another. 
Very handsome beasts. We are heroic; we lead the same life without the shadow of equip- 
ment and training and without having the right physique. In short the life we are leading is 
moved by a continuai effort of will." Later: "Now the lieutenant comes and tells me to stay 
behind because my cough is dangerous for everybody at night in a surprise action like that 
being planned. ... I protest with energy I would rather quit the corps than stay behind, TU 
cough with my head in a blanket but I want to be in the front line!' " 

The Cyclists' Battalion was dissolved in December 1915. Among its volunteers had 
been Marinetti, Sironi, Funi, Erba, Piatti, Sant'Elia, Russolo; Boccioni returned to Milan. 
In June 1916 he was the guest of the marchese and marchesa di Casanova in their villa at 
Pallanza on Lago Maggiore where he began to paint again: "I am working a lot and in 
various ways. . . . It is terrible, the burden of having to work out for oneself a century of 
painting." He abandoned his strident and highly charged palette and turned to a new 
imagery related to the French Post-Impressionist tradition. He passed through another time 
of crisis, in confronting his earlier experiments, and deepened his formai interests, finding 
inspiration in Cézanne's volumetrie analyses. In that brief period of the artist's work a new 
approach to space and image became evident, with a return to a more analytical phase in 
studying the figure and color. In the few works painted in Pallanza his old love for luministic 
effeets mingi es with a renewed awareness of structure and space, and the portrait of Ferruccio 
Busoni (no. 85) shows the new Boccionian expressi veness. 

In July 1916 Boccioni was declared fit to join the regular army and assigned to the 
field artillery. At the end of the month he left for Sorte, near Verona: "You can't imagine 
what it means to re-become a soldier at thirty-four and in my condition and with what life 
was about to give me. Courage, but it's terrible," he wrote onjuly 29 to Vico Baer, the 
friend who had always helped him in moments of need. On August 17 Boccioni died 
following a fall from a horse. On the occasion of the posthumous exhibition held from 



xxxv 



December 1916 to January 1917, which Boccioni had asked Marinetti to organize in the 
event of his death to help his aged and ili mother, his battle companion Carrà wrote a 
moving testimony to his dead friend: "I see him there, in the July atmosphere of the road, at 
the edge of an islet of electric light, amid broad shadows stretching around him in the torrid 
immensity of the night. His words were of the first hours of our fraternal friendship when 
at evening, work done, in a perfect spiritual communion our spirits mingled in the same 
felicity. . . . We felt we had tormented ourselves overmuch, and we would have liked to give 
vent to ali the tenderness that filled us with agitated emotion on that ève of departure for 
Verona, for war and death. I should have liked to clasp him to my breast, and for him to take 
with him that act of my brotherly feeling, but I lacked courage to do so, and at the dawning 
of the day (oh how many dawns had found us together conversing about art) we exchanged 
a firm handshake, and I could think of nothing except a salutation: Addio, caro! Addio. How 
could I have thought that those words were the terrible salute to the brother about to die? 
Forever moving forward, with an impetus forever new and always different, he was setting 
out to surpass even himself, and his last spiritual steps forward speak to us of the even 
greater ardor of the first struggles." 



xxxvi 



The Futurists and Their Contemporaries 



The Futurists had been a long time formulating their theories and were determined to 
maintain their identity by standing firm in the storms of innovation that were sweeping 
over the art world. While ali the Futurists agreed to this separation, it was upheld especially 
by those best informed about the international scene — Marinetti, Severini, and Boccioni. 

Severini had moved to Paris in 1906, and he had become the link between the Futur- 
ists and the artistic and cultural world outside Italy. He moved in the circles that championed 
the most avant-garde tendencies and knew many literary figures. He would marry the 
daughter of Paul Fort, the prime despoètes, and Apollinare, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, 
Braque, Picasso, Raoul Dufy, and Suzanne Valadon were among his friends. In 1910 Severini 
accepted his friend Boccioni's invitation to sign the first Manifesto of Futurist Painters and 
thenceforth kept the band informed of the latest news in Paris through long letters which 
remain of great interest. In 1911, during their first officiai showing as a group (an exhibition 
held in Mìlan in the former premises of the Ricordi music publishers), they were vigorously 
attacked by Ardengo Soffici, the Fiorentine champion of Cubism who accused them of 
using worn-out forms and iconography made irrelevant by the Cubists. Soffici's articles 
in the review La Voce about Picasso, Braque, and the other Cubists stirred the newly 
formed group to confront the French challenge. For the Futurists the renewal of Italian 
culture was a matter of international as well as national import. To break through the 
limitations of a vocabulary stili tied to a pronounced idealism, they needed to under- 
stand just what their artistic rivals were up to. The theoretical texts they wrote cìearly 
distinguished their aesthetic from that of the Cubists, a definition that was as necessary 
for their development as for the public's. 

The first significant contact with Cubist ideas carne from a lengthy letter that Severini 
wrote to Boccioni in 1911. It read in part: "The most modem [painters] can be divided into 
Cubists, Picassoans, and Independents. I give the latter that name because I don't know 
what other to give a number of individuai who propose to turn out painted canvases 
following only their minds' impulses but with neither aim nor direction. They say they 
don't want to confuse their fellow creature by giving him the illusion of something true by 
means of paint. When they have produced a nude woman, for example, they say: 'This is 
canvas and these are the colors, but I did not set out to produce a laughing woman or, better, 
I made this woman as my brain wished it and not as my eyes and everyone else's have seen 
her in life.' In landscapes some of them attempt to present trees and houses from the greatest 
possible number of sides; indeed, their aim is to present objects from ali sides, and in that 



xxxvn 



they are in direct contact with the Cubists but with the difference that the Cubists resolve 
the problem directly by showing half the object in perspective and the other half immedi- 
ately alongside, sectioned like an engineer's blueprint, whereas these others compose bizarre 
perspectives that at the most give the impression of seeing the objects in a bird's-eye view 
from above. Those who strictly speaking are Cubists do not even know why they are called 
thus. Perhaps it is because of the geometrie forms that predominate in their pictures. Their 
endeavor is certainly heroic but infantile. I allude to the goal they have set themselves to 
achieve: painting an object from several sides or dissected. The engineers have resolved that 
question in a more complete fashion, and there is no need to go back to it. Some Cubists 
become decorators and caricaturists, but then their sincerity is open to doubt." 

Severini distinguishes between the Cubists and Picassoans by explaining, according 
to his own point of view, how much the process of abstraction practiced by Picasso and 
Braque differs from the self-styled Cubists* fanciful and even arbitrary tricks of perspective. 
(This distinction between Picassoans and Cubists, with the latter term reserved for painters 
like Metzinger, Gleizes, Le Fauconnier, and Lhote, refleets the general criticai position of the 
time.) His observations sum up the polemics that raged around the Salon des Indépendants 
which opened at the end of Aprii 1911. In Room 41, the focus of much heated debate, there 
were works by Le Fauconnier, Gleizes, Metzinger, and Delaunay, ali of them artists strenu- 
ously defended by Apollinaire in the pages of L'intransigeant. In an article published on Aprii 
21 the poet stressed the force of these works and the modernity of their style, though with- 
out denying that they looked very much stripped down to basics and sometimes overly 
rigid. Ali of these artists made an obvious effort to solve the problem of reducing and 
concentrating form, a problem Picasso and Braque had resolved with a considerably greater 
intensity of synthesis. But the latter pair demonstrated an aristocratic aloofness in their 
refusai to participate in the officiai exhibitions, and in any case during this period their 
efforts were increasingly concentrated on issues of spatiality and on the dialectic between 
image and reality. 

Since 1910 Severini had been living at 5 Impasse Guelma in Montmartre, the same 
building in which Braque had his studio. There he observed his French colleague's develop- 
ment firsthand and discussed the problems that had concerned him for some time, notably 
the relation between form and movement that was the cornerstone of the Futurist aesthetic. 

Severini wrote further: "If you say to them that a chair has no inherent movement, 
they reply that because man can impart one to it, they consider [the chair] as a thing en- 
dowed with movement. However, sometimes they fix on an object constituting part of the 
picture, for example, a dice cube or a drawer handle, and they put a good deal of emphasis 
on that detail. If you ask them why, they will teli you that a die does not have the same 
movement as a drinking glass or a bottle or a chair; and if you teli them that this affirmation 
is purely gratuitous and is a rather obvious contradiction, they reply: 'There are so many 
things like that that one can't explain!' And then they pretend they are not intuitive! Some of 
their theories come fairly dose to our truths. For example: If you look at a man, you can see 
him circumscribed within a definite plastic form because now you have to see him in con- 
nection with ali the movements he can make and in ali the deformations resulting from 
the movements. Yet they do not accept that one can give the impression of movement by 
giving a man in motion more arms or more legs, because by that means one would arrive at 
most at an impressionistic physical truth to the detriment of the plastic and pictorial point 



xxxvni 



of departure which, for them, is the same as that adopted by the masters, from Rembrandt 
right up to Corot. " 

"In front of one of his pictures," Severini went on, "I made Braque confess that 
his art was in principle descriptive, and once I got this assertion out of him I pointed out 
that by the force of things it became anecdotal. And so very anecdotal that to depict a table 
you use the kind of walnut stain sold in corner paint shops and applied to ordinary soft 
wood to make it look like walnut. And the same for ebony and rosewood. In that way, he 
says, it works out to be much simpler and less arty. " 

The young Futurist was trying strenuously to grasp the basic principles of the Cubist 
method, but the significance of the structural intuition Braque and Picasso relied on eluded 
him, as did their fundamental credo that their images had nothing to do with empirical 
reality. He did, however, recognize the importance of their efforts to simplify forms and to 
render the image in simultaneous views. He saw too that, while the paintings of Braque and 
Picasso were strikingly similar in this period, each painter was in fact exploring entirely 
different aspects. Picasso aimed at his own kind of pictorial truth by confronting the prob- 
lems of spatiality and looking deeply into the reality of the objects he represented. Braque 
was more concerned with the relation between things and colors, and he concentrated more 
on the problem of their relationship with the space around them (whence the charge of 
illusionism that Severini brought against his paintings). 

Severini continued: "They make a show of a great distaste for the nobility of colored 
material and for painting in general. When I tried to remind Braque that the Greeks inserted 
hairs into a sculptured head to create a beard, he said that he himself was following this 
principle but that the Greeks had turned away from it because they aimed at an expression 
of beauty whereas he did not wish his painting to be beautiful. . . . This exaggerated repug- 
nance of theirs for beauty has an explanation in something their friends told me: It seems 
they are convinced and fervent Chris tians. For that reason they make use of the humblest 
materials in order to enhance a kind of intimate modest beauty, something perhaps inherent in 
them [the materials]; this constitutes their ultimate goal in art, quite outside any contempo- 
rary metaphysical problem." 

Severini's reference to the placement of a realistic element, convincingly naturalistic 
in appearance, into an obviously unrealistic context is of special interest, above ali in 
light of the future development of both Cubism and Futurism and the revolutionary innova- 
tion of collage. Even more significantly it anticipates the introduction of real-life materials 
into sculpture which Boccioni himself would practice beginning in 1912. 

Severini's long letter reveals the gulf that, from the outset, separated Futurist and 
Cubist aesthetics. On the one hand, Futurist painting: compounded out of light and color, 
based on the dynamic decomposition of forms — forms broken down not for analysis of 
their structure and components but in consequence of their motion in space and the associ- 
ated emotion — and accentuated by a fierce and pure-toned coloring. On the other, Cubist 
painting: exploration of tonai modulations conceived in relation to the forms as such. While 
the Futurists' approach was based on the harsh clash of pure colors and a palette emphasiz- 
ing complementary colors, Braque and Picasso looked to analogies of tones, not contrasts, 
within a limited variety of colors. "I should like my colors to be diamonds," Severini 
wrote, echoing an idea developed at length in the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting of 
Aprii 11, 1910, "and to be able to use them abundantly so as to make my pictures more 



xxxix 



dazzling with light and richness. Before siding once and for ali against Picasso and his com- 
rades, I want to continue the analysis of them and their works. Certain of their theories 
appear to have a good deal of truth in them and cannot be condemned a priori: Indeed, 
certain of them are indisputable truths. The only thing is, I am not in rapport with their 
artistic expression. 

"In a portrait, they say, there is no need to work out exactly the physical harmony 
that exists between the eyes, the nose, and the mouth, but one does need to understand the 
moral link between those details of the face; and that moral harmony can be understood and 
must be conveyed despite ali the deformations imprinted on them by movement. If you teli 
them that they are drifting into caricature, they reply that their deformations are in rapport 
with their conception of what a picture is, that is, quite outside the physical harmony 
everybody understands and sees, whereas in caricature the nose is always placed beneath the 
eyes and the mouth beneath the nose." But "moral harmony" was exactly what the Futur- 
ists were denying in this first phase of their activity. 

"The art of the Cubists," Severini observed, "beginning with Léger and up to 
Le Fauconnier and Metzinger traces no new path nor will it leave any trace despite the num- 
erous imitators and the few admirers. They are stili too attached to the bygone laws of 
plasticity to enter into the field of abstract painting or purely metaphysical expression. In 
fact, in some of their canvases they do not go beyond Impressionism, applying it to com- 
municate some anecdote or other. They have their origin in Derain whose figures without 
chiaroscuro (Matisse fashion) seem to glorify the grotesque, but a deliberate and consciously 
infantile grotesque. The Cubists say they base their work on the ethics of Corot, but they 
follow the aesthetics of Cézanne. " 

This passage anticipates Guillaume Apollinaire's affirmation in Les Peintres Cubistes 
(1913) that André Derain was the real precursor of the Cubist aesthetic. But while Derain 
pursued a course that began with the study of Cézanne and would lead him in about 1906 to 
concentrate on the transposition of forms, he never analyzed subjects structurally. Yet both 
Severini and Apollinare seem to have intuited that Derain's particular approach played a 
fundamental part in the discovery of the aesthetic possibilities of African art, its primitive 
imagery and its reduction to essentials. Certainly Apollinaire and Severini saw much of 
each other in 1911 and may well have exchanged opinions on the burning issues of the day. 

As Severini saw it, "only Picasso and Braque, who only recently broke with the 
Cubists, have a formidable, new boldness. They truly take as little as possible from nature 
and break away from ali the laws of art accepted till today. They do not paint forms and 
colors but sensations, and because of their total renunciation of the laws of art, I believe they 
are closer to literature than to painting. In fact, if it is true that artistic expression needs to be 
liberated from atavistic slavery to form, and that form must be subjected to ali the sensations 
and deformations due both to movement and to the almost simultaneous succession of 
different impressions on the retina, it is also true that (to remain in the field of painting) 
certain artistic principles must be retained to reveal the cause of the sensation the painter 
expresses. Those principles are moreover exclusively intuitive, and therefore often confuse 
the sensation with the cause that produced it. And perhaps this is why those two artists, and 
Picasso in particular, are often suspected of bluffing, and their sincerity is questioned by the 
majority of people. They can also be accused of being one-sided because both of them, with 
an identical manner of coloring and with the same rhythm of line, always express the same 
sensation. 



xl 




Gino Severini, Dynamism of a Dancer (Dinamismo di Jean Metzinger, The Dancer, 1912. 

una danzatrice), 1912. Pinacoteca di Brera The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York 

(Collezione Jucker), Milan 



"Be that as it may, they are the most interesting artists of our age, and their art is one 
of our Futurist verities. . . . One needs to be grateful to the Cubists for the formidable slap in 
the face they have given the Academy and the public that enjoys commonplace expressions 
that cali for no effort. They aspire to lead the public toward a new aesthetic and in that 
respect are admirable. They want no more landscapes with dazzling colors. Nature is too 
materially beautiful and kind to the eye. To our tormented souls ali that healthy delight in 
color and line is as irksome as the laughter of children amusing themselves while we are 
gnawed by doubt. If a modem painter wishes to spare modem spirits, who seek new and 
profound sensations in art, the noisome impression of that importunate laughter, he must 
garner in life other beauties than the physical ones of color and form; color and form 
should no longer exist save in the guise of sensations and not as goal in themselves. Here 
is our point of contact with the truth of Braque and Picasso, whom I classify with the 
name of neo-artists. " 

When Boccioni received Severini's long letter he had very likely not yet written the 
text for the lecture he would give in May 191 1 at the Circolo Artistico in Rome. Certainly 
his friend's ideas and his highly detailed descriptions of the current innovations in the Paris 
art world must have come as a boon. The letter, along with Soffici's article on Braque and 
Picasso in La Voce, must have played a large part in persuading Boccioni to make a sorde to 
the French capital, which he did in October. 

A previously unpublished letter (now in the Museum of Modem Art, New York) by 
Boccioni dated October 15, 1911, indicates that he arrived in Paris some ten days after the 



xli 



Salon d'Automne opened: "I have already seen the modem painters who interested me. I 
will continue to study them, but I see that I had already intuited virtually everything about 
them and it is merely a certain outward look they have (due to the enormous incredible 
influence of Cézanne and Gauguin and others) that makes the ideas of some of them appear 
more daring than they really are. Of the Cubists I have not yet seen Picasso, Braque, and a 
few others. Of those I have seen — Metzinger, Fauconnier, Léger, Gleize [sic], etc. — only the 
first is really venturing into an unexplored field . . . but what metaphysics!! Everything I 
myself have done in the way of metaphysics (physical transcendentalism) is stili something 
of an absolute reality. . . . 

"It is strange how nothing, absolutely nothing, has escaped me of what goes to make 
up the complex of aspirations of the finest modem painting! I say strange because, thinking 
of Italy, I marvel that I haven't died there of drowning. . . . And now that I am about to 
touch shore I think with infinite tenderness of the person who helped me keep afloat in that 
sad sea of social and intellectual mediocrity which is Italy today! I have a great longing to 
return. I have to work like a madman, even if it kills me, but it is sad to think that I will 
have to spend my entire life sweeping up Italy's trash and refuse! Here I am extremely well 
known among the young artists and my incognito under my mother's name Forlani has 
given me a lot of amusement. 

"At the Bai de la Gaiette last evening word got around among a band of Italian 
painters that I was there, and throughout the evening they ali buzzed about our group. 
Finally one of them carne up to me and asked if I was Boccioni. I replied yes but that having 
left in Italy ali my ideas about painting, I wanted to have a rest and avoid ali discussion. 
There were introductions, and a Genoese painter with a horrific look of bohème poured out 
ali his woes to me. . . . The young man ruling the roost here now is Picasso. There is much 
talk about him, and the dealers put his tiniest and most insignificant pen-and-ink sketches in 
their Windows in huge sumptuous and even antique frames and, underneath, with great 
ostentation: Picasso(\). It is a real and marvelous launching, and the painter scarcely finishes 
a work before it is carted off and paid for by the dealers in competition with each other." 

Boccioni had been in Paris only two days but had already seen the works of most of 
the Cubists who interested him. His first reaction was defensive. He claimed he had already 
intuited what the artists were up to from Severini's description; this was not an idle boast, as 
can be seen in the text of the lecture he had given five months earlier. His letter indicates that 
the indebtedness to Cubism some find in him has been asserted much too strongly and at 
times too uncritically. Cubism was, of course, extremely important in the forging of the 
Futurist aesthetic, but it is also true that for years Boccioni had been developing new ideas that 
only needed to be put to the test — therein lies the importance of his trip to Paris in the fall 
of 1911. 

This was not Boccioni's first visit. He had been in Paris for a few months in 1906 
when he was overwhelmed by the look and feel of that great city. Rome had a population of 
five hundred thousand — a village compared to the Parisian megalopolis. "Think of the 
thousands of carriages," he wrote to his family on Aprii 17, 1906, "and the hundreds of 
omnibuses, horse-drawn, electric, and steam-driven trams, ali double-deckers, and the 
motorized taxicabs in the streets; think of the Metropolitan, an electrified railway that runs 
under ali of Paris and the tickets are bought by going down into great underground places 
entirely illuminated by electric light; the ferry boats, exactly like those in Venice and always 



xlii 



packed with people. It is something simply past believing. In the midst of ali this movement 
put thousands of bicycles, lorries, carts and wagons, private automobiles, delivery bicycles. . . . 
The streets are full of advertisements; signs even on the roofs; cafés by the thousands ali 
with tables outside and ali of them packed; in the midst of ali this three million souls 
who rush about wildly, run, laugh, who work out deals, and so on and so on as much as 
you want. . . . 

"I have seen women such as I never imagined could exist! They are entirely painted: 
hair, lashes, eyes, cheeks, lips, ears, neck, shoulders, bosom, hands and arms! But painted in 
a manner so marvelous, so skillful, so refined, as to become works of art. And note that this 
is done even by those of low station. They are not painted to compensate for nature; they 
are painted for style, and with the liveliest colors. Imagine: hair of the most beautiful gold 
topped by little hats that seem songs in themselves — marvelous! The face pale, with a pallor 
of white porcelain; the cheeks lightly rosy, the lips of pure Carmine shaped clearly and 
boldly; the ears pinkish; the neck, nape, and bosom very white. The hands and arms painted 
in such a way that everyone has very white hands attached by the most delicate wrists 
to arms lovely as music" (Birolli 1971, pp. 332-38). 

In October 1907 Boccioni again visited Paris, this time for a week. When he returned 
to Milan, he was exhausted and racked by doubt. He was seized by violently religious and 
metaphysical emotion and felt impelled to delve into the depths of the spiritual and physical 
worlds. Between late 1909 and early 1910 the discouraged young artist met the self-styled 
"caffeine of Europe," Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, poet by trade and firebrand by inclination. 
The encounter infused Boccioni with a new vitality. While the works he produced at that 
portentous moment of his life do not depart from traditional pictorial formulas, they push 
to an extreme a Divisionism marked by intense color and complex brushwork. 

With the parturition of the Futurist movement the troubled artist would suddenly 
win greater assurance. He would throw himself into a life outside his narrow world, open 
himself to the risks of unrestrained emotion. He would move ever further away from a 
traditional conception of form and, at last, venture into the exploration of himself and his 
art that he had been contemplating for years. In 1910, when he began work on The City 
Rises (no. 50), he would declare that he had meditated on the idea of the picture for four full 
years, that he had worked painfully and obsessively on that whirling frenzy of colors which, 
originai as it is, stili bears the stamp of a markedly Symbolist approach. 

For years he had been pondering the problem of how to represent modem life, and it 
was in large measure the contact with the great urban world of Paris that finally moved him 
to create more modem, more timely expressive forms. The adventure of Futurism, launched 
in 1910 with an intense theoretical program formulated in its manifestos, unleashed the 
twenty-eight-year-old's pent-up aggression. For ali the new movement's determination to 
stir up an Italy stili dreaming of its past, Paris was the artistic heart and center of the world, 
and Paris would be the Futurists' touchstone and lodestar. 

When Boccioni went off to Paris in October 1911, he was already pondering the 
ideas that underlie States ofMind (no. 56), the canvases he completed in the months just 
before they were shown at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. If Boccioni's conception was tainted 
by a certain evocative Symbolism, it nonetheless already involved a dynamic element that is 
unrelated to the Cubists' frigid and static optic. The works by Le Fauconnier and Gleizes 
that Boccioni saw at the Salon d' Automne and mentioned in his letter were perhaps too 



xliii 



descriptive for the budding Futuristi, and Léger's canvas had in fact been criticized by Apollinare 
as a modest product of a stili unripe pei sonality. Room 8 in the exhibition which housed 
those artists had been dubbed "Cubist" by the poet-critic who made much of the fact that 
they had now truly taken on the character of a school. In Room 8 there were also works 
by the brothers Marcel Duchamp and Jacques Villon whose acquaintance Boccioni would 
make a few months later on the occasion of the Futurist exhibition at the Galerie Bernheim- 
Jeune. Duchamp was then working on Nude Descending a Staircase, a painting which, criti- 
cized by Gleizes, would be refused by the Salon des Indépendants in March 1912. 

In Souvenirs: Le Cubisme 1908-1914, the memoirs he wrote during World War II, 
Gleizes recalled the excitement of the exhibition opening: "The ensemble no longer pre- 
sented the homogeneity of Room 41. The representatives of orthodox Cubism — Le Fauconnier, 
Léger, Metzinger, and myself — found themselves side by side with artists having only 
remote resemblances to them, who did not have the same point of departure and who would 
for a long time or forever deny any connection with Cubism. ... In any case, despite that 
lack of homogeneity, the ensemble had a fine provocative air about it. In those painters one 
sensed an air of battle. . . . Very curious, that rush of visitors denser in that year of 1911 than 
in earlier years because they had been alerted by items in the newspapers announcing the 
participation of the 'Cubists' whose appearance, six months earlier, had been a surprise." 

Boccioni arrived in Paris just as the new movement was taking off. Picasso and 
Braque, who did not choose to show with the other artists, were not, however, classified as 
Cubists, and in fact Gleizes and Picasso would not meet until after the inauguration of the 
Salon d'Automne. Boccioni declared that the artist who impressed him most was Jean 
Metzinger, because his theoretical position was both more advanced and clearer than that of 
the other Cubists (Picasso and Braque as always excepted). Metzinger had published articles 
on the relationship between the new art and the classical tradition and, in addition, called for 
a "totality" in painting that would synthesize ali possible views of the object represented. 
Apollinaire's review of the Salon d' Automne stressed Metzinger 's richness of imagination 
and profound culture, noting that he had finally shaken off the influence of Picasso so 
conspicuous in his earlier paintings. His compositional structures, once very similar to 
Picasso's, were now being simplified and resolved in a manner less volumetrie and more 
confined to the picture surface. Unlike works from the same time by the first Cubists, his 
paintings treat the decomposition of the image without aiming at three-dimensionality. He 
emphasized instead the intersection of planes without overly stressing the feeling of form. 
In Metzinger 's works of this period there is a certain effort at abstraction, but he stili appears 
the most naturalistic of the Cubist group. The abstraction of the forms, which may have 
been what appealed to Boccioni in Metzinger's work, was based on very different values 
from his. For Boccioni the new form and the new color, as he had proclaimed in his lecture 
of the preceding May, must arise out of the emotion aroused by the subject itself. 

Boccioni met Apollinaire in the fall of 1911. "I have not yet seen any Futurist pic- 
tures, " the critic wrote in the Mercure de France in November, "but if I have understood 
correctly the point of the new Italian painters' experiments they are concerned above ali with 
expressing feelings, virtually states of the soul (this is an expression used by M. Boccioni 
himself ), and with expressing them in the most forceful manner possible. These young 
people also desire to move away from naturai forms and claim to be the inventors of their 
art." With a tone of half-amusement half-irony Apollinaire also made much of Severini's 



xliv 



whim of wearing socks of different colors. Fernande Olivier, Picasso's mistress at the time, 
also mentioned this detail and described Boccioni's first meeting with Picasso: "During the 
winter after the return from Céret — Picasso had spent the summer of 1911 there together 
with Braque working in isolation — the Italian Futurists burst upon Montmartre convoyed 
by Marinetti whom Apollinaire was simply dotty about. Naturally enough they carne to 
Picasso's. Severini as well as Boccioni who died in the war were hot-headed fanatics who 
dreamed of a Futurism dethroning Cubism. They made a great thing out of their professions 
of faith. . . . They tried to give themselves bizarre airs, attempting to stand out physically at 
least, to create a sensation, but their means were mediocre and they often made themselves 
ridiculous. Boccioni and Severini, leaders among the painters, had inaugurated a Futurist 
fashion which consisted in wearing two socks of different colors but that matched their ties" 
(Olivier 1933). 

Even before their introductory exhibition the young Futurists elbowed their way into 
the Parisian art scene spoiling for a fight. To impress that (presumably) hostile (or merely 
indifferent?) world, no weapon was neglected: rhetoric, dialectic, debate, demonstrations, 
unmatched socks. No surprise then that these foreign artists were greeted with a certain 
wariness. If no thing else, with their theories and their pictures (it is difficult to say which 
were more disturbing) they were introducing stili greater confusion into a situation already 
far from clear-cut. Having prepared a bumpy way for themselves, they made their officiai 
bow before the Parisian public in February 1912. The preface to the catalogue of their show 




at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune was written in the aggressive language characteristic of their 
manifestos. Though the preface was signed by the Futurist quintet Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, 
Balla, and Severini, a note made it clear that the ideas expressed had been propounded by 
Boccioni in his lecture of May 1911. The stand they took against the Cubists was harsh and 
unequivocal, and their shrill tone antagonized critics and artists alike. 

From their first programmatic pronunciamentos the Futurists had brandished the 
banner of Modernism. The time, they announced, was overripe for new aesthetic canons, 
and they were prepared to invent them. Modernism called for new and regenerating ideas, 
for broadly comprehensive images for which reality was a source of inspiration but not the 
measuring rod. The Futurists were the first to declare the aesthetic of the machine and of 
speed as the single ali-decisive principle for a cultural ideology. In his lecture of 1911 Boccioni 
had grappled with the dilemma of how one could represent modem life. To be truly modem 
a work of art had to mirror the urgent and relentless rhythms of the new times, had to strip 
away every trace of concern with the object as such which had made fleeting phenomena 
cold and lifeless. 

Theories notwithstanding, in the works Boccioni showed in Paris the relationship 
with reality was stili very strong and was rendered in a contradictory manner. The objective 
fact, the given, the point of departure constantly broke through to the fore no matter how it 
was swept along in the impetus of the movement and deformed by force-lines. The Futur- 
ists' extrovert art, which shone — glared — with violent colors and swift, aggressive images 
was completely different from the introverted experiments of the Cubists who conceived of 
a work of art as an object in itself whose form obeyed no laws outside itself. With their tense 
straining toward the future and toward a modem ideal, the Futurists transformed the very 
meaning of the object, while for the Cubists the object was a stable point on which to build 
their reflective vision. 

The theory of physical transcendentalism — of moving beyond the physical properties 
and limitations of "real" things — that Boccioni seems to pit against Cubist theories was 
based on an absolutism that arose from the Symbolist sensibility. The philosophical ideas of 
Henri Bergson — which stressed reliance on intuition and held that individuai consciousness 
was superior to ali closed systems and rigid mental categories — had been circulating for 
some time in French and Italian intellectual circles (his L'Evolution créatrice had appeared in 
Paris in 1907); Boccioni could certainly have been influenced by him. 

"Ali objects," according to the catalogue of the first Futurist show in Paris, "in line 
with what the painter Boccioni felicitously calls physical transcendentalism tend toward the 
infinite by their force-lines whose continuity is measured by our own intuition. " This state- 
ment sums up the fundamental difference between the Futurists and the Cubists. But 
when the Futurists (Boccioni in particular) attacked Cubism, their opposition was directed 
mainly toward the pictorial illusionism and the emphasis on the flatness of the canvas that 
were characteristic of the second generation of Cubists. While insisting on their profound 
ideological differences from Picasso and Braque, the Futurists maintained a respectful atti- 
tude toward those two artists, which increased over the years (this is especially notable in 
Boccioni's admiration for Picasso). 

Gertrude Stein knew every corner and secret of the French art world, and her greatest 
admiration was reserved for her friend Pablo Picasso. It was through him that she met and 
entertained the Futurists in the rue de Fleurus: "It was about this time that the futurists, the 



xlvi 



italian futurists, had their big show in Paris and it made a great deal of noise. Everybody was 
excited and this show being given in a very well known gallery everybody went. Jacques- 
Emile Bianche was terribly upset by it. We found him wandering tremblingly in the gar- 
dens of the Tuileries and he said, it looks alright but is it. No it isn't, said Gertrude Stein. 
You do me good, said Jacques-Emile Bianche. The futurists ali of them led by Severini 
thronged around Picasso. He brought them ali to the house. Marinetti carne by himself later 
as I remember. In any case everybody found the futurists very dull" (Stein 1946, p. 82). 

While Stein was strenuously championing Picasso's talent and conception of form, 
Apollinaire was beginning to turn his back on ali that and to campaign for a brand of 
Cubism he baptized "Orphic" and whose boldest representative was Robert Delaunay. At 
this time Metzinger and Gleizes brought out their book Du Cubisme which proposed an 
aesthetic based on the approach to form practiced by Cézanne and Derain. 

In the midst of these more or less open disputes the Futurists carne in search of a 
corner for themselves in the crowded, unsettled Parisian art scene. It was refused them. 
Only Gustave Kahn and Félix Fénéon, longtime friends of Marinetti, praised the new 
movement though less for the right reasons than because of the residue of the Symbolist 
spirit in Futurism which characterized their own approach. (A generous selection of reviews 
of the Futurist exhibition is found in Lista 1986.) For Apollinaire, Futurism was merely an 
Italian imitation of the French schools, in particular of the Fauves and Cubists. He criticized 
the Futurists' dispersion of the image and their insistence on representing various aspects 
of reality filtered through emotions without taking into account the element of time. 
Against that approach he held up that of the Cubists who brought together in a single object 
ali the various perceptions and reduced them to a single phenomenon. But Delaunay re- 
mained for him the artist who could best express the modem spirit. Delaunay 's colored 




in 1912. Photo: Luciano Pollini. Courtesy private archive, Padua xlvii 



Carlo Carrà, The Swimmers (Nuotatrici), 1910. 
Museum of Art (Gift of G. David Thompson, 
1955), Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh 



Robert Delaunay, The Eiffel Tower (La 
Tour), 1910. Collection Sonia Delaunay, 
Paris 



volumes and rejection of the laws of perspective were entirely apt, Apollinaire thought, for 
subjects based on a new reality, such as the paintings of the Eiffel Tower he began in 1909. 
For Delaunay the Eiffel Tower was his compotier, his substitute for the standard fruit dish 
painted over and over by one Cubist after another. Quite unlike the Picasso or Braque stili 
lifes, here was a subject aggressive in character and symbolic of the new industriai era. 
Delaunay 's dogged and obsessive repetition of the theme would lead him to disaggregate 
the forni and to burst it asunder in an explosion of violent colors. 

Around 1912 Delaunay began to paint the "simultaneous contrasts" that enchanted 
Apollinaire. Because of Delaunay's use of the word "simultaneity" there ensued a long and 
interesting debate with Boccioni which went on into early 1914. For Delaunay color had 
both a dynamic and a constructive value and represented at one and the sanie time forni and 
subject. As the "Heresiarch of Cubism" (Apollinaire's sobriquet for Delaunay) would 
explain later in writing, his painting took its departure technically from color and then 
developed through time, though the whole of it could be perceived simultaneously in a 
single glance. Color thus became in itself a function of space. 

Boccioni felt betrayed by Apollinaire. While the critic had never sided with the 
Futurists, and indeed energetically attacked certain aspects of their approach, he had none- 
theless shown a certain curiosity, if not a veiled interest, and had even confided to Severini 
that he was preparing a book in which he would include the Futurists as "Orphics." For ali 
their irreconcilable differences the theories of Boccioni and Delaunay had certain key words 
in common, most notably the term "simultaneity." For Boccioni this signified simulta- 
neous representation of states of mind, toward which end he strove to reproduce the plastic 



xlviii 



sensations of the subject and its setting in a single profoundly unified vision. A painting 
must be a synthesis of "what is remembered and what seen" (a phrase that was used in the 
introduction to the catalogue of the Futurist exhibition at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune) and 
involve an intersection and interpenetration of lines and forms which, through the image's 
movement, would draw the viewer toward and into the picture's center. Simultaneity, for 
Boccioni, expressed the exaltation of speed, the affirmation of modernity. Place, time, 
form, and color coexist in a single composition conceived to bring out the object's dynamic 
reality through a simultaneity not limited to the simple unfurling of an action in time but 
embracing ali the elements that could convey the sensation of speed visually. While Delaunay's 
theories, translated into paint, ended up by canceling out ali the phenomena of exterior 
reality and achieving a total formai abstraction, Boccioni never lost the feel of (and for) the 
object, and it is this, filtered through the emotions, that gave rise to the rhythm of the signs 
and the vibration of the forms in his paintings. 

The Futurist manifestos circulated quickly and were widely read and discussed. 
Propaganda was the group's most effective weapon, especially in the early period when 
their pictures were more in their minds than on canvas. Nonetheless this does not explain 
why groups and artists of a very different stripe should have held ideas so dose to theirs. 
There is, for one, an astonishing similarity between Boccioni's theories and those Kandinsky 
propounded in The Spiritual in Art, which he published in Munich in late 1911. To begin 
with, the cultural climate in which the Futurists and Kandinsky developed their ideas was 
much the same. Whether Italian or German (or, like Kandinsky, a Russian émigré), artists 
were not likely to have escaped or ignored the discussions on philosophical materialism, the 
polemics against the positivistic scientific approach, and the scientific discoveries that were 
overturning traditional notions in physics and in other fields of knowledge. Einstein's the- 
ory of relativity, first formulated in 1905, upended the traditional conception of an unre- 
lated absolute space and absolute time. The discovery of radioactive phenomena by W. K. 
Rontgen, A. H. Becquerel, and Ernest Rutherford meant that the idea of the atom as the 
ultimate physical particle had to be reconsidered and that a new science had to be established 
that would take into account hitherto unknown forces of radiation. Max Planck, with his 
quantum theory, threw open to discussion the wave theory of light. In philosophy the crisis 
that attended the birth pangs of the new century was sensed and expressed in a diversity of 
approaches: in an outburst of interest in spiritualism and the occult, in the various currents 
of methodological and criticai investigation proposed by German thinkers, in a new psy- 
chology allowing for both conscious and unconscious factors as against the schematic 
explanation and positivist determinism of a Bergson. 

Kandinsky maintained that nothing is absolute and that art is born out of the principle 
ofinner necessity. A marked mystical strain runs through his writings: Painting, defined as 
pure art, is one of the manifestations of the divine; the artist's subjectivity is subordinated to 
an inner voice that harmonizes oppositions and contradictions. These theoretical principles 
are the origin of Kandinsky's visual compositions, constructed out of chromatic notes that 
spread like sonorous vibrations, like music, across the space of his canvases: abstract com- 
positions that are entirely without a material objective model and that exist precisely and 
only because forms and colors have value in themselves. 

In his 1911 lecture Boccioni expressed a very similar concept: "Only that painting 
will be Futurist whose colors can represent and communicate a sentiment with the min- 



xlix 



imum possible recourse to the concrete forms that gave rise to it." Nonetheless, for 
Boccioni, abstraction proceeds out of reality itself. Because the artist aims to represent the 
becoming, the developing, of the object, his intuition will transform elements from the 
external world into a creation manifesting a sense of universality. Whereas Kandinsky with 
his philosophical reflections immersed himself in the spiritual substance of the universe, and 
the Cubists sought to capture the essence of things by means of intellectual investigation, 
Boccioni strove to penetrate reality by contemplating the relativity of phenomena and the 
way they manifest themselves in relation to the absolute. This was a tortuous and difficult 
quest in an age of increasingly concrete thinking which impelled him to seek, as he would 
himself state, a new finite "symbol of our conception of the infinite." 

In March 1912 the Futurists exhibited in Berlin in Herwarth Walden's Galerie Der 
Sturm where Delaunay and Kandinsky had shown on other occasions. Kandinsky now 
asked Walden not to promote these Italian artists: "You know my opinion of them. And the 
last manifesto (painting of noises and odors — without gray! without brown! etc.) is even 
more frivolous than those preceding it. Do not take this badly, dear Herr Walden, since for 
me likewise it is not something pleasant to talk about. But art is something sacred that should 
not be treated with such flippancy. And the Futurists merely play with the more important 
ideas they bring up every so often, though everything is thought through so little and so 
little felt. These things pain me. I know that ali of this is part of our present-day life, which 
is infinitely varied and creates with an unprecedented multiplicity of manners. But I have 
none the less the right to withhold my support from elements I find antipathetic. It will be 




Herwarth Walden, owner of Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin, 
with his wife, Neil; behind them hang two paintings by Chagall. 
Photo: Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 
Handschriftenabteilung, Berlin (West) 



enough that I do not fight against them" (letter 137, dated November 12, 1913, Staats- 
bibliothek, Berlin). 

It is obvious that the chief concerti of ali artists of whatever stripe was to 
safeguard their personal field of action, their small corner in the vast world of art. The 
game consisted (as it does today) in setting up a policy of alliances and oppositions which in 
an instant, virtually without warning, could shift out of either conviction or expediency. 
Such a change transformed the virtually fraternal bond between Delaunay and Apollinare. 
As early as mid-1913 their accord was showing signs of strain. It was then that Apollinare 
issued his own manifesto, L 1 Antitradition futuriste (dated June 29, 1913), which aimed to 
reconcile the Cubist and Futurist positions; he also took steps to heal the breach with Boccioni 
which had opened during the dispute about simultaneism. A postcard (private collection, 
Padua) Apollinare sent to Boccioni early in 1914 testifies to the cordiality with which the 
contact was renewed: "Dear friend, Forget about Delaunay and work well; soon we shall 
put together an issue with reproductions of the Futurists. When do you come to Paris?" 

The great mobility in the cultural would — new arrivals, upheavals, reversals, quick 
successes and quicker failures — induced each group to conduct its discussion in its own way. 
Certainly the manner the Futurists adopted topped ali the others in violence and white-hot 
polemics. If in one sense that constituted their strength, in another it created their isolation. 

On February 17, 1913, the Armory Show opened in New York. For the first time the 
American public was brought face to face — emphatically, even violently — with the works 
of those European artists who, particularly in the preceding decade, had overturned and 
transformed the vocabulary of traditional and academic forms in painting and sculpture. 
Ali in ali the venture proved thoroughly worthwhile and had important consequences: 
in Europe because of the debates raging in those months over such artistic and literary 
currents as Cubism and its heretics, Futurism, and the "spiritualism" of a certain Russian 
and German tendency; in the United States because those stimulating controversies were 
extended to a new and fertile terrain and, above ali, because on a practical piane a new and 
as yet unexploited market was opened up for both foreign and domestic art. 

The Armory Show offered a selection from those currents that had most appealed to 
the organizers who, only a few months before, scarely knew more than the general talk 
about a Picasso or a Braque. Not everyone was satisfied. In an article titled "Evolution and 
Revolution in Art" published in The International Studio in Aprii 1913, the critic Christian 
Brinton noted that the exhibition failed to provide a comprehensive and unified view of the 
latest tendencies. "One was not a little disconcerted to discover Klimt, Bilgas, Marc, Mestrovic, 
Minne and Burljuk, while such significant groups as the Dresdener Brùcke, the Berliner 
Neue Sezession, the Mùnchener Neue Vereinigung, and the Stockholm Eight, not to men- 
tion Severini and the Futurists, were substantially or wholly without representation." 

With Braque, Delaunay, the Duchamps, Kandinsky, Léger, Picabia, and Picasso pres- 
ent in the Armory Show, even if represented by only a limited number of pieces, why were 
the Futurists excluded? Their name at least was known, however much misinterpreted and 
misused. The term "futurist" appears again and again in the blizzard of articles the 
Armory Show elici ted; it was almost always used erroneously to describe, usually pejora- 
tively, anything considered to be avant-garde. No end of Cubist works were labeled "futurist," 
and it was the adjective most frequently applied to Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a 
Staircase. 



li 



The appearance in America of the artists who were legitimately termed Futurists was 
eagerly anticipateci. The organizers of the Armory Show had offered the Futurists a room 
in which their works could be shown together and thereby avoid confusion with the lower- 
case "futurists." Why did the group decline the invitation? In November 1912 the organiz- 
ers met in Paris with Severini and Boccioni, who was making a brief visit to that city. In a 
letter that seems to date from that month Boccioni wrote to his fellow Futurist Carlo Carrà 
asking him what Futurist projects were planned and what agreements had been reached 
concerning the exhibitions in which members could or should take part. Boccioni turned to 
Carrà for this information because Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the literary and artistic capo 
of the Futurist movement, was in the Balkans as a war correspondent. Marinetti's Milan 
home had become the Futurists' headquarters and meeting place, the site of their discussions 
and debates, and the place they received their mail. Its "officiai" status is confirmed by the 
fact that its address appears on ali the Futurist manifestos put out in those years. 

As it happened, shortly before the approach from the American organizers, the 
group had been invited to participate in a Rome exhibition, one whose title constituted a 
program and, for Italy, a challenge: the First International Roman Secession Exhibition. 
Planned to run from March 31 through June 30, 1913, its aim was to extend Italian artistic 
debate into a broader, European context like that created in Austria and Germany by the 
Sezession exhibitions. Among those already committed to lend Impressionist works were 
the same Parisian galleries that had promised their collaboration to the Americans, including 
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune where the Futurists had already shown. 

The Rome exhibition was designed as a homage to Impressionists and Divisionists 
with emphasis on Italian Symbolists with French antecedents; paradoxically the latter repre- 
sented a more advanced position than the D'Annunzio-influenced approach of the Italian 
officiai and academic painters. The selection committee included Giacomo Balla, onetime 
teacher of Boccioni and Severini and himself a signatory of the Futurist manifesto on paint- 
ing. An influential member of the committee, he saw to it that his Futurist comrades were 
invited to take part in what was planned to be a major event in Rome. 

If the Futurists opted to show in Rome, however, they could not join in the Armory 
Show since the dates overlapped. In his letter to Carrà mentioned above, Boccioni instructed 
him to "go to Marinetti's and have them show you his correspondence. From the envelopes, 
I hope, you will be able to see if there is a letter from Balla or from the Secession committee. 
If you find a letter, write and teli me what it says. . . . Wire [Rome] to get a categorical reply 
about the exhibition at the Secession. In any case and as soon as you have any news write or 
wire me at Severini's. AH of this because we are invited to show in New York with Picasso, 
Braque, the Cubists, Cézanne, etc. . . . The matter would be of no interest to me if one of 
my friends had not written to Severini that he has heard about a forthcoming Futurist show 
in New York. This (I imagine) is the work of Dr. Borchardt who for purposes of outright 
speculation, with the paintings bought at half price, is moving ahead of us and despoiling ali 
the most important cities in the world. Our triumphal entry into ali the capitals is com- 
pletely compromised! This really annoys me and will annoy Marinetti even more to whom 
I am writing right away. . . . Besides, we are committed to Amsterdam, I think, with the 
contract for Aprii 1913" (Archivi del Futurismo 1962, voi 1, pp. 246-47; corrected follow- 
ing originai in Carrà archives, Milan). 



Hi 



Boccioni in Paris(?), ca. 1912. 
Photo: Luciano Pollini. Courtesy 
private archive, Padua 



Immediately after their first show in Paris at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in February and 
March 1912, the Futurists were, as mentioned above, given another exhibition, this one in 
Berlin at the invitation of Herwarth Walden, the German poet and journalist who had 
recently taken to promoting new art. The Futurists' show was only the second such under- 
taking of this enthusiast. Long interested in Symbolist and Expressionist currents, he was 
now championing somewhat more innovative trends in both literature and the visual arts 
through his review Der Sturm and the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin. On the face of it the 
Berlin show was an unexpected success. A single collector, the Wolfgang Borchardt men- 
tioned in Boccioni's letter to Carrà, bought twenty-one paintings, almost ali of those on 



lui 



The room of Futurist works at the Panama-Pacifìc 
International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915. In the center 
is Boccioni 's sculpture Muscles in Movement (Muscoli in 
velocità, 1913), which was later destroyed. Photo: G. Lista, 
Il Futurismo, 1986 

view, as a block. This windfall was, however, a far from unmixed blessing. The transaction 
was compieteci very slowly because the purchaser found it difficult, he said, to pay the artists 
in full. (It cannot be ruled out that this apparent Maecenas was fronting for Walden, whose 
promotion of the avant-garde may have been a crass scheme to profit from the craze for the 
very latest in the arts.) The Italian artists were suspicious of such a conspicuous, almost 
wholesale purchase of their works (stili of untested commercial value), and Boccioni's 
concern about Borchardt's injudidous and badly timed presentations of Futurist art in ali 
the major centers was doubtless justified. 

"If I had not been in Paris," Boccioni wrote further to Carrà, "Severini would have 
known nothing about previous commitments or anything else, and everything was heading 
toward disaster with commitments and counter-commitments. Any way, if Marinetti wants 
well-staged entries (and he is right) he ought to see to them himself: War is beautiful, just 
looking at it is better, but our and my future matters more to me. . . . Write me what you 
think about New York. The whole thing is free. A hall 16 meters by 8 [52V2 by 26 Vi feet]: 
shipment December 7. Only drawbacks: lack of [separate] Futurist entrance, Rome exhibi- 
tion: Amsterdam exhibition. " 

Marinetti returned to Milan just about the time Boccioni wrote to Carrà. The capogruppo 
reacted strongly to Boccioni's complaints about Borchardt's raids on the Futurists' potential 
European market and, notably, its German sector. On November 15, 1912, the fiery, Machi- 
avellian impresario wrote to Walden: "We are very angry with you for not letting us know 
about the various exhibitions of Futurist painting you have organized with Dr. Borchardt. It 
would have been useful to do so, in the interest of those exhibitions themselves. . . . We are 



liv 



extremely angry because in your lectures you have jumbled together the Futurists with the 
Expressionists and others who have nothing to do with our movement. I have written a 
long letter to Dr. Borchardt on this subject. I beg you to read it with due attention. No one 
among the Futurist painters , those truly Futurist, that is, the founders Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, 
Severini, has exhibited in the Salon d'Automne. But in that Salon there are a good many 
Cubist, Post-Impressionist, and other painters who imitate the Futurists. They are ali epi- 
gones, as you yourself cali them, who are now turning away from cold and static Cubism and 
are making a great effort to produce pictorial dynaniism, compene tration of planes, anàpainting 
of states of mind, etc. We are therefore ali the more distressed to see that you, our great friend 
and such a brilliant connoisseur of art, are increasing the confusion the worid press is creating by 
considering as Futurist ali those who imitate our movement in painting. 

"We therefore wish to be informed about the exhibitions you are preparing, and we 
want those exhibitions to include exclusively genuinely Futurist pictures. Write me immediately if 
it is true that you are preparing an exhibition in New York, because in that case I would pian 
to give lectures in that city" (Archivi del Futurismo 1962, voi. 1, p. 253). 

Marinetti's letter makes it clear how strenuously he was prepared to defend the 
position of his quintet of artists and to brook no confusion with other artistic trends. He 
was more and more convinced that the group's success depended on maintaining its individ- 
uality and autonomy. 

On November 15, the same day he wrote to Walden, Marinetti wired Boccioni in 
Paris: "Hope to receive telegram from Rome tomorrow. Will advise you by telegram. 
Waiting for reply Walden about New York. We are ali absolutely against exhibition with 
Cubists New York. Wire me if remaining in Paris for long. Greetings to Severini. . . . Yours 
Marinetti" (private archi ve, Padua). 

Marinetti's chief reasons for refusing the invitation to the Armory Show must have 
been his protective feelings for his Futurist artists and his fear of compromising more 
interesting prospects. Consultation with Carrà and Russolo, the only members of the group 
then in Milan, could only have confirmed his own opinion that exhibiting alongside the rivai 
and even enemy group would only compound the existing confusion between Futurists and 
Cubists. There was no further discussion about Futurist participation in the American 
exhibition. Their refusai was a gallant or perhaps a provocative gesture, but it effectively 
cut them off from the potential support of the dealers, galleries, critics, and patrons across 
the Atlantic. 

It did not take the Futurists long, interested as they were in self-promotion, to realize 
the chance they had missed. American collectors were snapping up the work of the other 
European avant-garde artists, and this was a market the Futurists could not afford to over- 
look. It was proving difficult to make a place for themselves outside Italy; in France and 
Germany, where they had hoped to find an enlightened public, they were beginning to be 
regarded with a certain hostility. In Italy it would require a slow and patient effort to bring 
the national artistic consciousness into the twentieth century, and the moderation and toler- 
ant persistence necessary was not in the Futurists' character. And there were subterranean 
rumblings in the European politicai and economie situation hinting of the world conflict 
that would explode in the summer of 1914 and would encompass Italy as well after a year of 
neutrality. Thus, although it was a time when their efforts were turned to urging Italian 
intervention against the Austrian "occupier" of Northern Italy, the group accepted the 



lv 



invitation that carne to them at the end of 1914 to show in San Francisco, at the Panama 
Pacific International Exposition celebrating the completion of the Panama Canal. Yet here 
again things would not go smoothly for the Italian group; a new international market would 
not be opened to them. 

The Futurist works were probably transported to San Francisco from London where 
they had recently been. After the Panama Pacific International Exposition closed on Decem- 
ber 1, the paintings and sculptures remained in San Francisco for some months since the 
international section in which they were shown remained open until May. Whatever their 
expectations, the Futurists passed almost unnoticed. The war in Europe, which had entered 
a criticai phase, was a more absorbing topic than "modernistic" art, and many years would 
pass before American interest would quicken with regard to this art. 



Ivi 



Detail of no. 55a > 



PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS 



2 



1a. Young Man on a Riverbank (recto) 
Giovane sulla riva di un fiume 1902 

B. Study of a Wagnerian Scene (verso) 
Studio di composizione 1902 (?) 

Recto: gouache and colored charcoal on paper 

Verso: pendi on paper 

liy 4 x8 5 /8in. (29.8X21.9 cm.) 

Signed and dated lower right (recto): B. 902 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



Young Man on a Riverbank is the earliest known 
work by Boccioni. Although Ballo has dated 
it 1908-1909 on the basis of stylistic resem- 
blances to works of that period, there is no 
reason to doubt that the date 1902 at the lower 
right was written by Boccioni himself when 
he painted the picture. Both composition and 
technique reveal a beginner's uncertain hand 
or at any rate an artist whose technical com- 
mand is not completely developed, further 
disproving Ballo's dating, since by 1908-1909 
Boccioni's treatment was secure and rapid, Yet 
already, in this youthful work, the artist was 
using an untraditional viewpoint and estab- 
lishing an emphatic contrast between fore- 
ground figure and background piane. There 
is no graduai transition between topographi- 
cal elements: The contrast between them is 
deliberately emphasized in the figure seen from 
the rear, which serves as the only link 
among them and creates a curious dispropor- 
tion in the overall image. 

This picture was undoubtedly created 
during the artist's Roman years, and the scene 
— a bend in a river, possibly the Aniene or 
the Tiber, both of which flow across the 
Roman countryside — connects it with a pas- 
sage Gino Severini wrote in 1945, recalling 
his dose ties with Boccioni when both were 



young. In about 1900, when Severini first 
knew him, the young Boccioni had moved to 
Rome from Sicily where he had been living 
with his father; he had only elementary skills 
in drawing and was taking lessons from a post- 
er painter much in fashion at the time. On one 
of their first excursions to try their hand at 
copying from nature, the two young artists 
went outside the city walls one Sunday morn- 
ing: "When we arrived at Ponte Nomentano 
he sat down alongside me on an outcropping 
almost in midstream, took out a piece of paper, 
and began to draw the bridge. I messed about 
with my poor colors with a dogged determi- 
nation that only took me further from any 
satisfactory result. From time to time I looked 
over at Boccioni's sheet of paper, but his draw- 
ing was always at the same point. He had done 
it and redone it at least twenty times without 
ever succeeding in getting the entire bridge 
on the sheet. Each time he began at the left 
and continued doing òne detail after another 
right across the page to the right margin. When 
he got there he realized he had drawn scarcely 
half the bridge. My poor friend puffed and 
panted, was in a sweat, got red in the face and 
furious, and then suddenly asked me, 'How 
do you ever manage to get the whole thing 
onto your little page?'" 



3 




lB 



A few studies in perspective and of places 
and buildings in the city belong to the same 
period as this gouache. Ali of them are char- 
acterized by an effort to push to the limit the 
possibilities of a viewpoint that is never di- 
rectly frontal. The view is almost always fore- 
shortened, looking from below to above or 
vice versa, and Boccioni would increasingly 
concern himself with this compositional de- 
vice, especially in his Roman period. 

On the verso is a very rapid and sum- 



mary pencil sketch of a scene Taylor (1961b) 
calls "Wagnerian," evidently a compositional 
study based on a painting or engraving of a 
warlike episode. 



literature: No. 1a— Taylor 1961a, p. 22 (ili.); Tay- 
lor 1961b, no. 1 (1909); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 53; Ballo 1964, no. 123, p. 488 (1908-1909); Bruno 
1969, no. 1; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 5 

No. 1b— Taylor 1961b, no. la (ca. 1910); Ballo 
1964, no. 350 (1910); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 633 



2. Roman Landscape 

Campagna romana 1903 

Oil on canvas 
24 3 / 4 x48in. (63xl22cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom left: Umberto Boccioni 1903 
Museo Civico di Belle Arti (Collection Quattone), Lugano 



This work bears the earliest date of any of 
Boccioni's known canvases. The signature and 
date at the bottom left — Umberto Boccioni 1903 
— are written in block letters and framed by a 
thin red line. Close examination, however, re- 
veals that this inscription covers another sig- 
nature that has been canceled out. This type 
of inscription is found in other works by 
Boccioni from around 1908, for example, 
Lombard Landscape (no. 23 a), but for known 
works catalogued so far, there are no similar 
signatures before 1908. That fact, along with 
certain technical factors, suggests that the can- 
vas may have been retouched in 1908, five years 
after it was painted. The paint is full-bodied 
and built up considerably, with dabs and clots 
that cause multiple coloristic reflections. This, 
together with the fact that a sense of distance is 
achieved through variegated paint thicknesses, 
can be taken as a sign of an artist already fully 
formed and no longer tentative in his proce- 
dures. Further, while the quality of the paint 
treatment suggests a date later than the one 
given in the signature, the horizontal pian and 
decidedly nineteenth-century organization tend 
to confirm the earlier date. Moreover, there is 
concrete evidence that the work was conceived 
in 1903. In an unpublished letter to his sister 
dated August 4 of that year, Boccioni drew a 
pen sketch of a composition that is very close 
to the finished canvas. The drawing was ac- 
companied by a rather high-sounding phrase: 
"The subject I am sketching for you here is 
extremely simple and, precisely because of 
that, terribile." 

Conspicuous here are the influence of the 
rural symbolism of Pellizza da Volpedo and 
the example of Giacomo Balla, whose studio 
was much frequented by the young Boccioni 



and Severini. Balla had returned to Rome in 
March 1901 after spending seven months in 
Paris where he saw firsthand the new devel- 
opments in painting after Impressionism. His 
teaching was based on the study of new 
techniques in the use of color, on optical sen- 
sations, and on the effect produced by juxta- 
posing contrasting colors, and he demonstrated 
his theories in paintings that have an exacer- 
bated realism. In a 1916 essay in honor of his 
teacher, Boccioni wrote: "Balla's value did not 
lie in the, so to speak, ethical significance he 
attributed to his paintings but in the stubborn 
quest for subjects that would war against the 
run-of-the-mill look of pictures. He carried 
on a struggle against the Sublime with a su- 
perhuman solitary labor of almost mystical se- 
verity. We young men were drawn to him: 
Sironi, Boccioni, Severini, Constantini. To 
shake off the artificially prettified quality of 
art found in Rome, Balla saw that the only 
salvation was to plunge deeply into a kind of 
scientific sensibility. . . . The more art struck 
him as sweet, romantic, and sentimental, the 
more he strove for a reaction through a scientif- 
ically exact mortification of reality. . . . Balla 
fears emotion as a weakness, and there you 
have in essence the antiliterary and antisen- 
timental stance of modem art." 

Balla taught his young students to lay out 
the planes of a picture correctly and to set up 
a perspective that would not be merely ba- 
nally descriptive but analytic, thus ensuring 
that the forms would acquire greater force. In 
the present picture the composition is almost 
completely flattened. The cow, set very high, 
is rendered with painstaking detail, while 
the rest of the image is painted with oblique 
and Divisionist brushwork and with a very 



6 




7 



dense impasto of color built up over color. 

The painting was first shown under the 
title Meriggio (Midday) in the 1904 exhibition 
of the Amatori e Cultori, an annual event at 
the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. That 
same year Balla presented his Bankruptcy, 
which Severini would describe years later, em- 
phasizing its overly realistic approach: "It 
showed the lower part of a shop, shut down 
because of bankruptcy. The shutters, no longer 
open, derelict, filthy, covered with doll-like 
figures and hieroglyphs that children had 
drawn in chalk, truly suggested neglect and 
sadness. In a corner of the stone step there 
was a magnificently rendered glob of spit." 

On Aprii 5, 1908, Boccioni noted in his 
diary: "Have sold the picture Midday (Roman 
Country side) to Signor Gabriele Chiattone for 
reproduction. Took 80 lire." And again, in 
the list of works sold, after August 24, 1908, 
he wrote: "To Signor Gabriele Chiattone a 
landscape done in Rome and exhibited in Lu- 
gano [as] Midday. Eighty lire. Good." Boccioni 
had come to know the Chiattone family in 



Milan and had been particularly friendly with 
one of the sons, Mario, an architect who for 
some years would be dose to Antonio Sant'Elia 
and to Futurist ideas. Gabriele Chiattone 
owned a printing house — which explains the 
comment "for reproduction" — and usually 
bought directly from the artist, who was often 
in financial difficulty. The Chiattone family 
would later bequeath to the Museo Civico di 
Belle Arti, Lugano, twenty-two works by 
Boccioni, ali from his pre-Futurist period. 

It is likely that when the present painting 
was sold to Chiattone, Boccioni retouched it, 
freshening the color and adding the gloss that 
makes it resemble his 1908 works. Three small 
preparatory studies for this painting have been 
found among Boccioni's papers. 

exhibitions: Rome 1904, no. 965 (Meriggio)', Milan 
1916-17, no. 92; Milan 1960, no. 1; Reggio Calabria 
1983, no. 9; Verona 1985-86, no. 7 

LITERATURE: Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 33; 
Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 2; Ballo 1964, no. 2; 
Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 182, no. 2208; 
Bruno 1969, no. 2; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 8 



3. Cloisterof S. Onofrio 
Chiostro 1904 

Oil on canvas 

27^2 X 38% in. (70X98 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom right: Boccioni Padova 1904 
Museo Civico di Belle Arti (Collection Chiattone), Lugano 



There are at least four small preparatory stud- 
ies in which the composition of this painting 
is laid out from different angles. Since one of 
the pencil sketches is inscribed "S. Onofrio," 
the cloister depicted can be identified with cer- 
tainty. Only one drawing (8 l Ax 11 in. [20. 8 x 
28.1 cm.]; private collection, Padua) has the 
same basic composition as the definitive paint- 
ing. The finished painting has details not found 
in any of the preparatory drawings, among 
them the tree and fence at the right. 

The church of Sant'Onofrio is located on 



the Janiculum, one of the most picturesque 
sites in Rome. An impressive panorama ex- 
tends from the neighboring piazza, ranging 
from Castel Sant'Angelo to Palazzo Farnese. 
The church was founded in 1419 by Nicola 
de Forca Palena, a member of the Hermits of 
Saint Jerome. The interior of the single-naved 
edifice contains paintings by Antoniazzo Ro- 
mano, Agostino Carracci, and Domenichino. 
The adjoining monastery, where the poet 
Torquato Tasso died in 1595, has a rectangu- 
lar cloister constructed in the mid-fifteenth cen- 



8 




3 



9 



tury; in its loggia are frescoes depicting the 
life of the titular saint by the Cavaliere d'Ar- 
pino and other artists. 

In the present painting Boccioni attempted 
to utilize Divisionist brushwork with short 
strokes that — here and there, however — be- 
come longer and more rapid. It was a diffi- 
cult undertaking for a young artist, both 
because the subject afforded little scope for 
imaginative invention and because he had not 
achieved a sufficient level of technical skill. 

The signature indicates that the picture 
was probably painted, or at least finished, in 
Padua, where Boccioni's mother and sister 
were living. They would remain there until 
late 1907 or sometime between the end of 
1907 and early 1908, when they followed 
Umberto to Milan where he had recently taken 
up residence. 

In 1905 the present picture was submit- 
ted to the Salone dei Rifiutati, an exhibition 
organized by a group of dissident artists whose 
works had been rejected by the jury of the 
Amatori e Cultori exhibition. Of the five or 
six paintings Boccioni submitted to the latter 



exhibition, only one was selected, a self-portrait 
(no. 4), Boccioni therefore joined other artists 
in showing their rejected works in the lobby 
of the Teatro Nazionale. On that occasion, 
Boccioni's works caught the attention of Primo 
Levi, a noted art historian, who wrote in the 
Romedaily La Tribuna of March 12, 1905: "By 
Boccioni, who expresses himself with an au- 
dacity that is not always well balanced, there 
are numerous studies which in a large exhibi- 
tion would slip by unnoticed, but here much 
more easily attract the eye of the seasoned 
observer." 

This painting belongs to the bequest of 
the Chiattone family to the Museo Civico di 
Belle Arti, Lugano. 

exhibitions: Rome 1905b; Milan 1916-17, no. 86 
(Interno di un chiostro); Milan 1960, no. 2; Reggio 
Calabria 1983, no. 21; Verona 1985-86, no. 8 

literature: Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 33 (Interno 
dì un chiostro); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 1 
(Chiostro nel Veneto); Ballo 1964, no. 3; Archivi del 
Divisionismo 1968, p. 182, no. 2206; Bruno 1969, 
no. 3; Damigella 1972, p. xlvii; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 31 



4. Self-Portrait 

Autoritratto 1905 
Oil on canvas 

20VÌX27 in. (51.4 X 68.6 cm.) 

Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

Assigned to the year 1907 by various writers, 
notably Ballo and Bruno, the painting was 
given its proper date of 1905 in Futurism and 
the International Avant-Garde, the catalogue of 
the exhibition organized by Anne d'Har- 
noncourt at the Philadelphia Museum of Art 
in 1980-81. The portrait was reproduced in 
the May-June 1905 issue of the magazine 
L'Italia industriale e artistica, and Boccioni had 
had it printed on adhesive paper with the let- 
terhead of the lxvii Esposizione Internazionale 
di Belle Arti, the Amatori e Cultori, held in 
Rome in 1905. 



Severini is the most informative firsthand 
witness for the Roman period, when the two 
young artists were jointly seeking their indi- 
viduai artistic identities. In his Vita di un pittore 
Severini tells of the difficulties both artists had 
at the Amatori e Cultori exhibition: "Even 
though Balla was part of the selection com- 
mittee, I was rejected in toto. I had presented 
six or seven works including a large autumn 
landscape, Come le foglie [Like the Leaves]. 
Boccioni had submitted five or six works to 
the jury, and of these the only one accepted 
was a self-portrait which was the least inter- 



10 






esting of the lot. I should say that both 
Boccioni and I, instinctively and logically 
working out for ourselves Impressionist vi- 
sion and theory (with a daring and violent way 
of working), were without realizing it draw- 
ing dose to the expression of Cézanne. Only 
Balla could understand that attitude and stand 
up for it, which he did. But he did not suc- 
ceed in winning the point. Along with other 
painters not selected by the jury, we went ahead 
and organized the first exhibition of the rifiutati 
in the lobby of the Teatro Nazionale, which 
no longer exists." 



The Self-Portrait mentioned by Severini 
is the present one (now Collection Lydia Win- 
ston Malbin, New York, which acquired it 
from the artist's family). Boccioni must have 
valued this work highly if he never disposed 
of it during his riferirne. Severini's remark 
about the change in their painting style be- 
ginning in 1904 is well confirmed in this work. 
By that date the volumetrie feeling in Boc- 
cioni's work had already become progressively 
strengthened with respect to tonality, which 
was now relegated to a secondary role. The 
quest for a new dimensionality is nonetheless 



11 



stili achieved by means of color, which be- 
comes interwoven like the threads of a coarse 
canvas. 

In the present painting Boccioni seems 
to have been seeking a more rapici technique, 
something less minutely detailed which dis- 
pensed with painstaking analysis of reality. The 
face is not supported by a descriptive back- 
ground, and nothing underlines its forni. The 
large leaves of a tree at the left impel the figure 
to the foreground and accentuate its flesh-and- 
blood solidity. In two other portraits of this 
period, one of an elderly man and the other 
of the artist's aunt, Boccioni made much of 
the structure of the face, as here, hollowing 
out deep zones of shadow and markedly 



brightening other areas with strong slashes of 
light. He would soon abandon this new style 
of painting, and only in his last works, those 
of 1916, would he again experiment with this 
technique of broad constructive brushwork, 
which Severini called "Cézannian." 



exhibitions: Rome 1905a; New York 1961, no. 
21; New York 1973-74, no. 26 (ca. 1908); Philadel- 
phia 1980-81, no. 15 

literature: Italia industriale 1905, p. 23; Argan and 
Calvesi 1953, p. 35 (Collection Callegari-Boccioni); 
Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 55 (34X71 on.); 
Ballo 1964, no. 22 (34x71 on., 1907); Bruno 1969, 
no. 16a (1907); Damigella 1972, p. xlvii; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 40 



La Signora Virginia 1905 
Oil on canvas 

55 1 /sX45 1 /2Ìn. (140x115.5 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom right: U. Boccioni, Roma giugno 1905 
Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo Reale, Milan 



Between 1899 and 1901, his first years in Rome, 
Boccioni lived with his father in the home of 
his paternal aunt, a relative of Signora Vir- 
ginia Procida. Signora Procida's son-in-law, 
Duilio Cambellotti, was six years older than 
Boccioni. Chiefly interested in the decorative 
arts, Cambellotti was an illustrator of con- 
siderable elegance; he was also a painter and 
sculptor and later a set designer. He immedi- 
ately took to the young Boccioni, inviting him 
to his home and introducing him to other art- 
ists active in Rome. Years later, in testimony 
to his gratitude and friendship, Boccioni would 
give his Pittura, scultura futuriste to Cambellotti 
with the inscription: "To the dear and great 
artist, to the friend who supported my first 
steps with Constant friendship. " Boccioni ne ver 
forgot the help given him in his lonely, difficult 
youth and always retained a great affection for 
Rome. 

When he left for Paris in Aprii 1906, 
Boccioni stored some of his belongings with 
relatives and friends in Rome. The present 
painting was entrusted to Signora Virginia or 



to Boccioni's good friend Mario Sironi. In Oc- 
tober 1907 he wrote to Severini from Milan: 
"See if you can arrange for my things to be 
sent to me (payment on delivery). . . . Sironi 
will do what he can with Signora Virginia." 
He invited Severini to visit him in Milan— a 
city "full of masterpieces," he said, among 
them Leonardo 's Last Supper and "a Pietà by 
G. Bellini, miraculous!" — and added: "You 
will see nothing of mine. Everything I have 
done has been either destroyed, given away, 
or sold. Unfortunately, the latter case is rare. 
This is because of my movement from city to 
city. I want to settle down once and for ali 
and have ali my things from Rome. Busy your- 
self with this for a moment and see to it that 
they send me my books and canvases. These 
will help me to work here." 

Boccioni studied with Giacomo Balla in 
Rome, and the older artist's influence is evi- 
dent in the present painting. After using a more 
volumetrie painting style, Boccioni returned 
to his teacher's approach. He abandoned 
squared-off volumes and almost-distorted 



12 



faces, adopting odd perspectives and lighting 
effects, oblique brushwork, and overlapping 
colors to emphasize pictorial depth. 

Balla's teaching is especially evident in the 
photographic angle of the image, which is 
viewed from below, and in the foreshorten- 
ing of the bedroom at the left. The light in 
the picture comes from the bedroom and from 
an unseen source in front of the sitter. Signora 
Virginia emerges from the sharp contrast be- 
tween bright light and darkness as a massive 
black figure. 

As early as 1901, in his tempera and pas- 
tel Portrait of the Artisti Mother, Balla experi- 
mented with foreshortening large dimensions 
to make his mother's face appear as if mod- 
eled by light. He continued to explore this 
concept for several years, and it became the 
basis of the theory he taught the young Seve- 
rini, Boccioni, and Sironi. In 1904 Balla por- 
trayed his wife, Elisa, in a doorway with a 
play of almost monochromatic oppositions in 
which light and shadow shape the figure's con- 



tours. The following year he was stili at work 
on his group of four canvases about aspects of 
human life, in particular The Madwoman, a 
painting not only of pronounced pious feel- 
ing but also of disturbing desperation, height- 
ened by the violence of its color. By that date, 
however, Boccioni had not yet brightened his 
palette; he stili relied on a limited number of 
tones, while placing great emphasis on the 
harsh drama achieved by unusual perspectives. 

exhibitions: Rome 1906, no. 493; Milan 1909, 
no. 143 (Ritratto della signora Virginia); Milan 1916-17, 
no. 17; Milan 1934, no. 279; Venice 1960; Milan 
1973-74, no. 18; London 1979-80, no. 360; Milan 
1982-83, no. 1; Verona 1985-86, no. 17 

literature: Sarfatti 1916, p. 12; Emporium 1917, 
p. 77; Costantini 1934, p. 191 (Galleria Nazionale 
d'Arte Moderna, Rome); Nicodemi and Bezzola 1935, 
no. 217; Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 30; Ballo 1960, 
no. 40; Ballo 1964, no. 5; Archivi del Divisionismo 
1968, p. 182, no. 2207; Bruno 1969, no. 4; Caramel 
and Pirovano 1973, p. 13, no. 15; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 43 



6. Mother and Child 

Madre e figlio 1905-1906 

Pastel on cardboard 

38x28 in. (96.5x71 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Umberto Boccioni 

Private collection. Courtesy Galleria dello Scudo, Verona 



This previously unpublished pastel can be 
dated, for stylistic reasons, to 1905-1906. It 
is possible that it was completed by Boccioni 
before his departure from Rome in the spring 
of 1906; the signature at the bottom right is, 
however, quite similar to that located in the 
same position in a pastel of his mother dated 
December 1906, though here it looks faded 
and perhaps lightly retouched. 

The technique, while rapid and sketchy, 
demonstrates considerable analytical ability. An 
intense effort lies behind this image, whose 
style and palette bring to mind The Old 



Woman (no. 7). Here the composition is sim- 
pler; the perspective is less daring than in other 
works of this period, but the color and light 
are vibrant, remarkable for their sensitivity. 
The gleaming white of the tablecloth reflects 
on the clothing and faces, creating an expres- 
sive immediacy that approaches the in- 
stantaneity of a photograph. The interior is 
suggested through Divisionist pastel strokes. 
The hatching of the color becomes more rapid 
in some parts, and the form is barely suggested 
in places where the artist wants to create a 
sense of movement and vitality, as in the child's 



14 



hands. The dominant colors, exceptof course 
for black and white, are yellow and green, 
which are softened in some areas by cobalt 
blue shading. 

In this work Boccioni seems to allude to 
future developments in his art; the oblique and 
ragged technique foreshadows the luminous 
bands in Modem Idol (no. 55a). The Division- 



ism with which the artist experiments brings 
the whole composition toward a dynamic res- 
olution, surmounting the static, French- 
derived Pointillism. This work also shows an 
interest in Klimt's linear style and in the Vi- 
ennese Sezession. 

UNPUBLISHED 



7. The Old Woman 
Nonna 1905-1906 

Pastel on paper 
48 7 /sX31V8Ìn. (124X79 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: U. Boccioni, Roma 905-06 
Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia, Venice 



This pastel belongs to the group of works ex- 
ecuted by Boccioni during his years in Rome. 
Finished in the winter of 1905-1906, a few 
months before he left the city, the work shows 
the influence of Giacomo Balla. Balla's philos- 
ophy is evident even in the choice of subject. 
The older master liked to portray subjects den- 
igrated or ignored by society. Describing him- 
self in the third person, the artist wrote: "His 
friends were the people whom everyone de- 
spises and finds repugnant: madmen, beggars, 
the sick, those rejected by society/' 

This portrait of an old woman warming 
her hands at a small copper brazier is imbued 
with the humanitarian socialism Boccioni had 
absorbed from his reading. As Severini later 
wrote: "The relationship between the artist 
and society didn't interest us much; neverthe- 
less the general Marxist principle, according 
to which 'man is the product of his environ- 
ment,' drove us, if not to become formally 
interested in politics, at least to accept its in- 
fluence, in the socialist and communist forms 
that were then beginning to be taken seriously. 
One should keep in mind that we were living 
in a period of social upheaval, of demands 
and class struggle, of strikes put down with 
violence; and we fully experienced ali of this, 
with the enthusiasm of youth, the desire for 



'social justice,' and the deep emotional sym- 
pathy for the oppressed and indignation to- 
ward the rulers so characteristic of young 
people." 

In this work Boccioni fully exploited the 
possibilities of pastel. The white highlights and 
the oblique stroke so typical of Degas, em- 
phasize the hands and the face as the focal points 
of the composition. These elements then dif- 
fuse the light to the rest of the work. 

The work, along with La Signora Virgìnia 
(no. 5), was exhibited in Rome in 1906 at the 
Società degli Amatori e Cultori. The same ver- 
tical thrust, exaggerated by the view from 
below, is used in both pictures. 

exhibitions: Rome 1906, no. 509; Milan 1910; 
Venice 1910, no. 22; Milan 1916-17, no. 85; Venice 
1958, p. 65, no. 1 {Ritratto della nonna); Verona 1959 
{Vecchia con lo scaldino); Milan 1973-74, no. 19; Milan 
1982-83, no. 2; Reggio Calabria 1983, no. 29; 
Verona 1985-86, no. 19 

literature: Adriatico 1910a; Gazzettino 1910; 
Adriatico 1910d; Gazzetta di Venezia 1910b; Difesa 
1910d; Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 35; Taylor 1961b, 
no. 2; De Grada 1962, no. 3 {Ritratto della nonna); 
Ballo 1964, no. 6; Perocco 1965, p. 91 {Ritratto della 
nonna); Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 182, no. 
2211; Bruno 1969, no. 6; Perocco 1972, p. 91 (Ritratto 
della nonna); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 51; Ballo 
1984, no. 25 (ili.) 



16 




8 



8. Sophie Popojf 

Ritratto di Sophie Popoff 1906 



Oil on canvas 

78 3 / 4 x39 3 /sin. (200xl00cm.) 

Inscribed left center: unfinished (in Russian) 

Private collection. Courtesy Ellen JVlelas Kyriazi 



This portrait was painted during Boccioni's 
visit to Russia in the late summer and fall of 
1906. He left Paris on August 27, and after 
a week's train journey with stopovers in Co- 
logne, Berlin, and Warsaw, he reached Tsari- 
tsyn (now Volgograd) where he stayed for 
about a month. There he was the guest of 
Count Popoff and his family, Russian aristo- 
crats who were probably acquaintances of Au- 
gusta Petrovna Berdnicoff and her husband, 
the friends who had asked him to join them 
for a visit to Russia. Succeeding in raising the 
money for the trip, Boccioni expressed his en- 
thusiasm in a letter to his mother and sister 
(August 25, 1906): "I will be able to put out 
the ninety lire needed for the journey without 
beating around the bush and with no difficulty 
and will arrive decently fitted out!!!! You ask 
me if these people think well of me? Do you 
believe that they would take me there if that 
were not the case? Naturally I will be a guest 
in their house, or else how could I manage? 
Meanwhile the portraits will get done, but I 
have no worries about that. Doesn't it strike 
you as a stroke of luck?" 

As the letter indicates, Boccioni planned 
to pay his expenses by painting portraits, an 
activity which, given the number he produced 
in his early career, was an unfailing resource 
whenever penury threatened. 

It was probably in appreciation of the 
Popoff s' hospitality that Boccioni painted this 
portrait, which is of great importance in re- 
constructing his artistic development. Few 
documents survive from his Russian sojourn 
— scarcely more than this canvas and another 
one that has been recently discovered, a few 
photographs, and a letter written to his father 



from Padua after his return, in which he briefly 
described his journey. 

Before leaving Paris, Boccioni cautioned 
his mother to take care of the photographs 
she would receive "because I will send many 
from Russia and want to make an album of 
them" (letter, August 25, 1906). 

In 1912 the countess visited her daughter 
in France and brought her this portrait; it re- 
mained in the family until recently. Compared 
with the canvases Boccioni had produced in 
Paris, in which he had begun to use violent 
colors in strident and bold combinations, this 
image is notably more studied and carefully 
worked out. Iconographically dose to the 
Roman works and to the vertically composed 
portraits of Signora Virginia (no. 5) and of 
an old woman (no. 7), this work makes use 
of much less dense and more liquid paint 
whose transparency is achieved by successive 
glazings of color. Small touches of varicol- 
ored hues recali the Divisionist technique, 
applied sensitively, however, rather than scien- 
tifically. In the lower zone the brushstrokes 
become longer to model the sitter's body. This 
portion of the picture demonstrates a dynamic 
feeling for form — the paint is manipulated to 
accentuate the movement that begins in the 
woman's hands. 

exhibitions: Milan 1982-83, no. 3; Verona 
1985-86, no. 24 

literature: Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 241 



19 



The Mother 
La madre 1906 

Pastel on paper 
28 3 /8X20 1 /2Ìn. (72X52 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: Umberto Boccioni, Padova 1906 Dicembre 
Collection Antonio Catanese, Milan 



This portrait in pastel of the artist's mother 
was executed by Boccioni a few days after his 
return from Russia. This work shows a deeper 
awareness of technique, a greater composi- 
tional precision, and a more decisive and 
confident use of the pastel medium than do 
his earlier efforts. In early January Boccioni 
began to write his thoughts in a notebook, a 
practice he would continue for several months. 
'Tve been doing enough work these days but 
am stili searching for a conscientious expres- 
sive skill, and nothing more than skill. Here 
too I'm weak," he wrote on March 18, 1907, 
revealing his difficulty in finding a new means 
of artistic expression. Balla's influence is stili 
evident in this work, despite Boccioni's at- 
tempts to separate himself from his teachings: 
"Certainly Balla is losing his sway over me, 



but I'm far from being completely free of him" 
(diary, March 28, 1907). 

In this pastel the depiction of details is 
important in the definition of the whole; this 
approach emerged from Boccioni's experi- 
ments, and he referred to it in his writings of 
this period: "My pictures must have. . . that 
religious observation of details, that marvel- 
ous union of the true and the ideal, that cairn 
glorification that ought to penetrate ali the way 
from a gentle and grandiose whole to the sub- 
tle intimacy of the humblest detail" (diary, 
March 30, 1907). 

exhibition: Verona 1985-86, no. 25 

uterature: Severini 1933, p. 353 (Ritratto della 
madre); Ballo 1964, no. 12; Archivi del Divisionismo, 
1968, p. 182, no. 2210; Bruno 1969, no. 9; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 244 



Virgilio Brocchi 1907 
Oil on canvas 

15 3 /sX23in. (39.2x58.5 cm.) 
Private collection. Courtesy Galleria Cafiso, 
Milan 

Born in 1876 in Rieti of a Venetian family, 
Brocchi lived chiefly in Milan. Boccioni may 
have read his Fascino (1902) and Le aquile (1906) 
in which a vaguely socialist ideology is ex- 
pressed in a rather moralizing and rhetorical 
style. Brocchi presented his settings with rare 
photographic precision, and his narratives have 
an idealistic and romantic air. 

While Brocchi declared that art should ex- 
press itself in a "harmonious synthesis of re- 
ality and idealization, " Boccioni, around 
1906-1907, on his return from his trips to 



France and Russia, wrote about the difficulty 
of finding a meeting point between these two 
entities. It is not known when Boccioni met 
Brocchi, but based on stylistic comparisons, 
this portrait can be dated to 1907 with confi- 
dence. The figure of the writer is pushed for- 
ward and seems to lean toward the spectator. 
Dense brown brushstrokes mingle at the ho- 
rizon with other resonant notes in long streaks 
that seem to represent an extended seashore 
and the reflections of a sunset; the brief strip 
of sky is enlivened by large motifs with fiorai 
decorations. A highlight that strikes the head 
emphasizes the melancholy expression of the 
face, executed with a rapid, heavily loaded 
brush. A few touches of color — ranging from 
pink to yellow mixed with white — highlight 
the complexion, whose shadows are indicated 
by an olive green. 



21 



10 



In this painting Boccioni is increasingly 
distancing himself from the naturalism he 
learned during his years in Rome; here he tries 
to render the atmosphere of the setting and 
the sensibility of the sitter with a solidity that 
is ignited and alive, that vibrates in rapid ex- 
plosive bursts. 

Reporting the judgment of his lawyer- 
friend Emilio Piccoli in his diary (August 15, 
1907) Boccioni was most likely referring to 
this painting: "I feel that he esteems me highly, 
and every one of his words makes me ashamed 
of my insignificance. He has confessed to me 
that when he saw me in Padua in front of 
Brocchi's picture he thought of me as deluded 
and unfortunate because of my sad silence in 
the presence of my own work. And it's true, 



I can pretend, joke, exaggerate about anything, 
but when it comes to a work of mine, that is 
to say a prayer of mine to the Great Mother, I 
feel small, low, wretched, and I accept ali at- 
tacks as deserved. Do I deserve them? Am I 
sincere? Can I say that I've never left a work 
with the awareness of having done everything 
I could?" 

During these months Boccioni was as- 
sailed by Constant doubt — his anxiety and deep 
dissatisfaction induced him to undertake dif- 
ferent stylistic approaches. This portrait dates 
from this time of experiment and study, and 
if it seems immature, it nevertheless marks 
an important transition in Boccioni's career. 

literature: Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 245 



22 



Adriana Bisi Fabbri 

Ritratto della pittrice Adriana Bisi Fabbri 1907 
Oil on canvas 

20 1 /2X37 3 /8Ìn. (52X95 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: Boccioni U. / Padova 5 in 907 
Private collection 



Thanks to Boccioni's efforts, his cousin 
Adriana Bisi Fabbri, also a painter, participated 
in the Arte Libera exhibition of 1911 in Milan, 
where the Futurists showed together for the 
first time. On the ève of the opening, after 
having seen her works in the room adjoining 
that of the Futurists, he wrote to Fabbri: "Dear 
friend, A thousand excuses for not writing 
earlier. . . . Your works arrived with two panes 
of glass broken. . . . Immediately after your 



wall comes the Futurist room. . . . Of your 
works I prefer the Peahen and the Lizard. To 
give you my judgment on them is not easy. It 
seems to me that the literary idea may prevail 
over the pictorial idea." 

In 1907 Adriana Bisi Fabbri had married 
the journalist Giannetto Bisi, who would later 
take a lively interest in Boccioni's sculpture 
and write an article about it in 1913 on the 
occasion of its exhibition in Giuseppe Spro- 



23 



vieri's Galleria Futurista in Rome. On June 
15, 1908, Boccioni wrote in his diary: "Signor 
Giannetto Bisi, the husband of Signora Adri- 
ana Fabbri, has come to Milan. . . . He wished 
to talk with me and be with me, to show me 
that he has nothing against me and that he 
was mistaken in treating me coldly in Padua. 
He carne to meet me at Chiattone's and we 
talked or, better, I talked a lot, a little (indeed, 
a lot) because I am a naturai gabber and as 
soon as I meet a person who is even slightly 
intellectual, I blab everything I've been ru- 
minating over for months; a little too because 
I was weak enough to want to demonstrate 
that, whatever the subject, I was not a bloody 
fool. It is a weakness whose roots I cannot 
discover but which I deplore, while at the same 
time being certain that I will succumb to it 
again tomorrow. In fact, speaking about talk- 
ing a lot or a little, he said to me that now he 
knows me better than I know him. Is that so? 
Am I an imbecile? Do I do any harm? Yet I 
feel that I will not change. I take sensuous 
pleasure in fine talk and love to construct my 
thoughts in fine paragraphs (and I try to speak 
well and clearly), and I love to hear my own 
voice. " 

The present work is a synthesis of the 
portraits Boccioni had painted to date, both 
in the way the shadows are composed and in 
the relationship between the foreground figure 
and the background. Boccioni maintains an 
equilibrium among the lines of the composi- 
tion, and he succeeds in creating a harmony 
between the dynamic forces of landscape and 
sitter. This complex work shows a maturing, 
a meditation on his experiences in France and 
Russia. 

Boccioni was determined to give visible 
form to ephemeral emotions and events, writ- 
ing in his diary: "I saw a pigeon in flight, and 
as always I was struck by the idea that in mod- 
em art the poetry I would cali of the instant 
has been forgotten. There are few modem pic- 
tures that express in a modem way (in the 
most absolute sense) the fall of a leaf, the flight 
of a bird, the intimacy of a little corner im- 
bued with life, the harmony of a tiny cloud 



passing over the shape of things, etc, and ali 
those particular nuances of the great univer- 
sal whole that move one in pictures of the 
past. It seems to me that people may think that 
ali this detracts from the skill and the show of 
skill that they want to display in paintings. 
Segantini was right to teli us to return to the 
humble daisy in the meadow and drop ali those 
airs of skillful self-important artists" (March 
30, 1907). 

Some of Boccioni's early studies, datable 
around 1902, were done after Giovanni Segan- 
tini (1858-99), whose work he very much ad- 
mired. Boccioni, however, now aspired to a 
different kind of painting, something far more 
modem and less analytical. The tension be- 
tween his feeling for realism and his aspira- 
tion toward expressing the absolute was 
deepening, and it would pervade his work until 
his death. 

exhibitions: Milan 1933, no. 10 (Ritratto di donna); 
Reggio Calabria 1966, no. 6; Milan 1970, no. 117 
(Ritratto della pittrice A. Bisi Fabbri/ Figura femminile 
in giardino /Donna in giardino); Milan 1973-74, no. 
23; Milan 1980, p. 22; Verona 1985-86, no. 30 

literature: Ballo 1960, pp. 75, 98; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, p. 257, no. 92 (Figura ingiardino, 
signed bottoni right: "Boccioni Padova 5. vili. 909"); 
De Grada 1962, no. 29 (Donna ingiardino, signed 
bottoni right: "Boccioni U. Padova 5 [aprile] 1909"); 
Ballo 1964, no. 15 (signed bottoni right: "Boccioni 
Padova 5 vii"); Calvesi 1967, p. 28; Archivi del Divi- 
sionismo 1968, p. 183; no. 2223; Bruno 1969, no. 12 
(signed and dated bottom right: "Boccioni U. Padova 
5 vii"); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 249 



24 



12. The Sculptor 

Ritratto di scultore 1907 

Oil on canvas 

40y 8 x48 7 /8in. (102xl24cm.) 
Italia Assicurazioni, Genoa 

This paìnting demonstrates Boccioni^ exper- 
imental approach to composition; here he uses 
the window to achieve a curious framing ef- 



fect. The background is hatched with a me- 
ticulous pointillist technique, while the fìgure's 
face is modeled with rapid brushstrokes that 
give the feeling of a plastic relief, obscured in 
some areas by overly deep shadows. The three 
planes of the composition are each observed 
differently : Rapid, almost violent brushstrokes 
are used for the foreground figure; small poin- 
tillist touches for the middle ground; chro- 



25 



matic variations of tone in the sky and in the 
cupola for the background. 

The work presents problems of dating. 
Ballo (1964) fìnds in it 4 'a certain relationship 
to the Impressionist painters observed during 
the artist's trip to Paris." Calvesi (1953) at first 
relates this portrait to the artist's stay in the 
Veneto region, which, before the publication 
of the notebooks and certain important let- 
ters, had been placed between 1905 and 1907; 
however, he later remarks (1958) on the por- 
trait's stylistic connections with later works 
— "because of the crystallization of the radiant 
forms it could instead be closer in time to Riot 
in the Galleria [no. 49]." 

The work, quite different from those 
painted in Padua, has formai elements that 
could place it between the end of the artist's 
Paduan stay and his move to Milan. The cu- 
pola in the background may be that of San 
Marco in Venice; the construction to its right 
would then represent the beli tower, which 
had not yet been completely rebuilt after its 
collapse in 1902. On the other hand, the arch- 
itecture may represent Sant'Antonio in Padua, 
with its domes and spires. It seems more 
likely, given the buildings and vegetation 
that can be glimpsed through the window, 
that the canvas was executed in Padua and 
perhaps finished at a later date. 



It is diffìcult to establish a definitive title 
for this work. In the posthumous exhibition 
of December 1916-January 1917, organized 
by Marinetti at the Palazzo Cova in Milan, a 
painting entitled Ritratto di scultore was shown; 
this is the only known work that could corre- 
spond to it. There is no evidence to show that 
the subject of the portrait is either Brocchi or 
Ripamonti, as has been often suggested. 

exhibitions: Milan 1916-17, no. 22 (Ritratto di 
scultore); Rome 1953, no. 28 (Ritratto dello scultore 
Ripamonti, 1916); Venice 1958, p. 65, no. 2 (Ritratto 
dello scultore Brocchi, 1906); Venice 1960, p. 14, no. 14 
(Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi, 1907); New York 1961, 
pp. 24, 142, no. 22 (Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi, 1907); 
Milan 1970, no. 118 (Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi or 
Ritratto dello scultore or Ritratto dello scultore Ripamonti); 
Reggio Calabria 1983, no. 131; Verona 1985-86, no. 29 

literature: Argan and Calvesi 1953, pi. 1 (Ritratto 
dello scultore Brocchi); Calvesi 1958; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 69 (Ritratto dello scultore Ripamonti); 
De Grada 1962, no. 30 (Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi, 

1906) ; Ballo 1964, no. 32 (Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi, 

1907) ; Perocco 1965, p. 93 (Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi, 
1907); Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 185, no. 
2247 (Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi or Ritratto dello scultore 
Ripamonti or Ritratto di scultore, 1907); Martin 1968, 
no. 25; Bruno 1969, no. 27 (Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi, 
1907); Birolli 1971, p. 238 (Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi, 
1907); Perocco 1972, p. 93 (Ritratto dello scultore Brocchi, 
1907); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 250 



Boats in Sunlight 
Barche al sole 1907 

Oil on canvas 

17 3 /4X24 3 /4m. (45x63 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni left: U. Boccioni Venezia 907 
Private collection 



On Aprii 5, 1907, Boccioni wrote in his diary: 
"I am about to leave for Venice. Padua does not 
attract me. It is a provincial town; I am appalled 
to be there with my many struggles. Among 
ali these petty property owners, being poor is 
a worse crime than elsewhere. . . . No one ad- 



mires anyone who is stili on the way to becom- 
ing someone." A few days later he left Padua 
and on Aprii 20 wrote: "I have been in Venice 
twelve days now. I am fairly strong in myself. 
I am living regularly and working. Evenings I 
go to the Querini Stampalia Library and read." 



26 



The Venetian environment influenced the 
young artist's choice of subjects. In none of 
his Venetian paintings, however, did he dwell 
on the picturesque; he tried instead to capture 
the subjective sensations aroused by an en- 
chanting site. The concentrated iridescence of 
luminous color in Venice became dispersed on 
his canvas into multiple cold, almost frozen 
gradations. Light, either diffused or reflected 
in the omnipresent water, acquired a stronger 
significance for him. For the first time since 
his early efforts on the banks of the Tiber and 
the Aniene, Boccioni attempted to capture 
the ever-changing aspect and effect of water. 

On July 12 he noted in his diary: "I have 
patched up my affairs — actually it was Piccoli 



who patched them up by selling two marine 
views for me for fifty lire." It is likely that 
these paintings were the present one and an- 
other of the same dimensions which may have 
been conceived as a companion piece. 

exhibitions: Milan 1916-17, no. 315 (Barche al sole 
a Venezia); Reggio Calabria 1966, no. 8 (Barche al sole 
a Venezia); Verona 1985-86, no. 32 

literature: Ballo 1 964, no. 26 (Barche al sole a 
Venezia); Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 183, no. 
2230 (Barche al sole a Venezia); Bruno 1969, no. 23 
(Paesaggio a Venezia [barche al sole]); Bellini 1972, 
p. 25; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 254 



27 



The Grand Canal in Venice 

II Canal Grande a Venezia 1907 

Oil on canvas 

26V 4 X 26 3 À in. (68 x 68 cm.) 

Signed and dated lower right: U. Boccioni Venezia 5-907 
Courtesy Galleria dello Scudo, Verona 



Boccioni lived in Venice from Aprii to Au- 
gust 1907, growing more dissatisfied each 
day — "I dream of countries that are complete, 
modem, energetic, remote from ali this harp- 
ing on the antique that crushes one. Would 
Milan be better for me? Paris? America? Scan- 
dinavia?" (diary, July 5, 1907). "I continue not 
to work. I am not discouraged about my abil- 
ity but about the pecuniary issues that will 
improve only when I prostitute myself in the 
most ignoble manner. People continue to speak 
badly of Milan to me. There is a popular aver- 
sion for the only Italian city that is up to some- 
thing. I am tired. I am lacking in everything, 
morally and materially. And I think that in 
Milan life will be worse" (diary, July 12, 1907). 

Boccioni enrolled in the Istituto di Belle 
Arti in Venice on May 21, and on his enroll- 
ment certificate it was noted that he had stud- 
ied at the Scuola del Nudo in Rome and was 
living in calle della Fava 5601 in the parish of 
San Salvatore. The present painting depicts 
the stretch between the Rialto Bridge and the 
Fondaco dei Tedeschi where the canal bends 
toward the Fabbriche Vecchie, a location very 
dose to where Boccioni was living. Motifs 
that would reappear in his later work are ai- 
ready in evidence — the suggestion of a bal- 
cony that cuts across the canvas, giving a sense 
of direction; the foreshortening generated by 
the oblique perspective. The bouquet of 
flowers at the lower right is not an arbitrary 
decorative touch but is used to emphasize the 



innovative viewpoint. The device of a view 
through a window, which he used in The 
Sculptor (no. 12), was to remain one of the 
artist's most frequently repeated motifs well 
into his mature years, to be used with diverse 
compositions and foreshortenings. 

This painting may have been inspired by 
a Venetian scene by Paul Signac shown in the 
French hall at the seventh Venice Biennale, 
which was held during Boccioni's stay in the 
city. However, when recording his visits to 
the international exhibition, he rarely men- 
tioned foreign artists: "I am at the exhibition 
and as always fmd very little here except for 
an occasionai major artist. I find the foreign- 
ers even more messy, slovenly, vulgar in tech- 
nique, though they may be truly noble in 
inspiration, if and when there is any. On the 
other hand, we put on display our civil, intel- 
lectual, and moral poverty with bastard tech- 
niques yet with ways of seeing that are always 
clear, clean, and joyous, which reveal the La- 
tinity beneath our centuries-old misery" (diary, 
July 12, 1907). 

exhibitions: Venice 1948, no. 23; Venice 1958, 
p. 65, no. 3; Verona 1959; Reggio Calabria 1983, 
no. 135; Verona 1985-86, no. 35 

literature: De Grada 1962, pi. 2; Ballo 1964, 
no. 28; Perocco 1965, cover, p. 96; Munari 1967, 
p. 35; Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 183, 
no. 2233; Bruno 1969, no. 22; Perocco 1972, cover, 
p. 96; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 257 



28 



15a. Gisella 1907 

Pastel on paper 

38% x 26 3 / 4 in. (98 x 68 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni left: U. Boccioni 907; 

inscription: Gisella 
Cassa di Risparmio di Calabria e di Lucania, 

Cosenza 

b. Gisella 1907 
Drypoint 

9 5 /b x IVA in. (24.4 x 33.7 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

The same subject exists in three versions: an 
oil, a pastel, and a drypoint. The most suc- 
cessful is the pastel, which is superior in spa- 
tial construction and handling of light. The 
bust-length oil (private collection) has a cer- 
tain sluggish quality; there are no originai el- 
ements that set it apart from Boccioni's other 
Venetian works. In the present pastel the half- 
length figure occupies most of the picture; 
from the empty space at the left an effect of 
radiation is generated. This light emphasizes 
the woman's features, as does the dark back- 
ground, which is covered with oblique, thread- 
like strokes. Balla's influence is seen in the 
photographic cropping of the image and in 
the play of light, almost monochromatic in its 
subtle and very slight color variations. The ra- 
pidity of the strokes recalls Toulouse-Lautrec. 

The pastel was exhibited in 1910 in Ven- 
ire at the Mostra d'Estate in the Palazzo Pesaro, 
where Boccioni had been invited to hold a 
one-man show. The Gazzetta di Venezia noted 
that "the image of the streetwalker Gisella, 
strongly depicted in her vulgarity, seems in- 
comparably audacious, perhaps because it 
shows no awareness of ali the discussion about 
de Goncourt's Fille Elisa many years ago." In 
the Corriere della Sera, the reviewer wrote: 
"One was expecting pictorial acrobatics, ideo- 
logical eccentricity, in short a bit of revolu- 
tion; but instead there was nothing, unless you 
want to cali Gisella, a large pastel showing a 
prostitute calmly seated on a divan, Futurist. " 



The critic Giulio Pagliano of L'Adriatico was 
no more polite. In fact, none of these writers 
realized that the pastel had been done in 1907, 
three years before Boccioni met Marinetti and 
embarked on the Futurist adventure. 

The work was sold shortly afterward to 
the painter Mario Volpi. Toward the end of 
July Boccioni wrote to Nino Barbantini, di- 
rector of the Museo d'Arte Moderna and sec- 
retary of the Mostre Bevilacqua La Masa: "I 
agree with you in accepting the conditions of 
Signor Volpi, whom I do not know person- 
ally, but please give him my thanks." In an- 
other letter to Barbantini, which can be dated 
early August, Boccioni emphasized his eager- 
ness to sell the pastel: 'Tm amazed not to have 
received any answer to my special-delivery let- 
ter to you about the sale of Gisella to Signor 
Volpi. I told you to accept 200 lire and to thank 
him." The pastel was sold immediately there- 
after, as shown by the notice published in the 
newspaper L'Adriatico on August 17: "Mario 
Volpi has purchased the pastel Gisella, one of 
the most important items in the Umberto 
Boccioni exhibition." 

In Venice Boccioni applied himself to the 
technique of engraving. In Aprii 1907 he had 
noted in his diary a method for using dry- 
point and on July 26 wrote: "A drypoint on 
which I set great store did not come out in 
the printing. I need a press. . . . I've started 
another drypoint, a nude youth on the start- 
ing line for a race. It's ali right but awfully 
weak." The engraving Gisella, executed in 
these months, was taken from the pastel. 

exhibitions : No. 15a — Venice 1910, no. 26; Milan 
1953, no. 284; Ivrea 1963, p. 8; Cortina d'Ampezzo 
1971-72, pi. 2; Verona 1985-86, no. 41 

LITERATURE : No. 15a — Adriatico 1910a; Gazzetta 
di Venezia 1910d; Corriere della Sera 191 Oc; Adriatico 
1910c; Difesa 1910c; Ballo 1964, no. 18; Perocco 1965, 
p. 94; Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 184, no. 
2234; Bruno 1969, no. 15b; Bellini 1972, p. 19; Perocco 
1972, p. 94; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 264 

No. 15b — Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 3; Taylor 
1961b, no. 306 (1909-10); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 417; De Grada 1962, no. 7; Ballo 1964, no. 20, p. 
Ili; Bruno 1969, no. 15c; Bellini 1972, no. 1; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 265 



30 




31 



16a. Maria Sacchi 

La Signora Sacchi 1907 

Pastel on paper 

30 3 /8X26y4Ìn. (77X68 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni left: Umberto Boccioni 1907 
Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, Milan 

b. Maria Sacchi Reading 
La Signora Sacchi 1907 

Drypoint 

19X12% in. (48.3X32.1 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni; dated bottom right (in reverse): 

Milano 907 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



"I went to Paris to cure and heal myself. I am 
going to Milan with the intention of winning 
and conquering it." Thus wrote Boccioni in 
his diary on May 29, 1907, although he did 
not leave Venice until mid-August. 



During his first months in Milan he con- 
tinued to show the influence of Balla, though 
he began to move beyond his teacher by seek- 
ing out more unusual photographic viewpoints 
and studying the dramatic possibilities of light. 




33 



The drawing of Signora Sacchi is stili 
within the sphere of Boccioni's Roman works; 
it is similar in format to the portrait of Si- 
gnora Virginia (no. 5), and, above ali, to the 
The Old Woman (no. 7). In this pastel, how- 
ever, he is more interested in the relationship 
between indoors and outdoors, in the color- 
istic potential of light, and in the modeling 
of a figure through chiaroscuro and tonai 
contrasts. 

A large part of the composition is occu- 
pied by a window, through which a slanting 
light is diffused, picking out details not only 
of the figure — notably the side of the face and 
the hands — but also of the domestic setting, 
like the window frame, the low bench, the 
back of the chair, the withered plant in the 
window box, and the bird cage hanging from 
the window latch. 

Maria Sacchi was Boccioni's neighbor in 
Milan, and toward the end of his first year 
there the artist portrayed her in various poses. 



In the present drypoint — with a Renaissance- 
style inscription at the top right — the artist 
drew the old woman's face with minute care, 
fully exploiting the technical possibilities of 
the medium. The spatial setting is defined by 
a harsh and emphatic linearity. 

literature: No. 16a — Taylor 1961b, no. 4; Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 15 {lntemo)\ Ballo 1964, no. 43; 
Bruno 1969, no. 30a; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 271 



Seated Woman ( Artist 's Mother) 
Donna seduta 1907 

Pastel on paper 
18% x 14^8 in. (48x36cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Collection Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick 



Although undated, this pastel is stylistically 
dose to works Boccioni produced in late 1907. 
The treatment is secure and rapid, and the art- 
isti sensibility is influenced by Expressionist 
models. While not renouncing the poses he 
had favored since 1905 — the seated woman, 
foreshortened and turned so as to occupy only 
part of the space — -Boccioni here dispensed 
with the attention to details stressed by Bal- 
la's teaching. 

In technique this portrait is much like Two 
Old Women Seated {Due vecchie sedute; private 
collection, Milan) , a pastel dated 1 907, in which 
the faces are modeled, indeed hollowed out, 



with strokes charged with energy and tough- 
ness. Here too the marked contrast between 
light and shadow gives the woman an expres- 
sion at once embittered and solid. The forms 
of her body are sculptural, and the emphasis 
on her hand gives the composition a dynamic 
synthesis. 

Bruno (1969) conjectures that this pastel 
may be another portrait of Signora Sacchi 
(no. 16). 

literature: Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 63; 
Ballo 1964, no. 47; Bruno 1969, no. 33; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 278 



34 



Studyfor "Homage to Mother" 

Studio per Veneriamo la madre 1907-1908 

Pencil on paper 

15 3 /s x 22 3/ 4 in. (39. 1 x 57.8 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Umberto Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



In the fall of 1907 Boccioni spent some days 
in Munich with the thought of visiting Saint 
Petersburg again — a project that carne to 
naught because of the vagueness and "changes 
of mind" of the Russian woman he was to 
accompany. After visiting in Paris briefly in 
early October to see the exhibition of the Ital- 
ian Divisionists, he returned to Milan burdened 
with doubts and indecisioni "I have written 
nothing. I am not energetic when it comes to 
myself. I cannot bring myself to do thousands 
of things, and I am often tired. Much hinges 
on the total lack of funds for beginning seri- 
ous works. . . . As soon as I can, I will buy a 
little of everything in order to get to work. I 
have sketched out the idea for a triptych, Ho- 
mage to Mother. I would have begun it already, 
but I lack the funds. The greatest difficulty 
after that is to infuse something true into the 
form of the idea without falling into vacu- 
ousness and superficiality. This is the picture: 
In the side panels, the two children. One is 
studying and exploring science; through the 
window there is a glimpse of modem life. 
The other one works by lamplight; through 
the window is seen a cloudy evening sky, and 
the moon shines in. In the middle panel is the 
weary mother flanked by two figures sym- 
bolizing the children's love, the two spirits of 
adoration. One is gentle, femmine, and kisses 
the mother 's hand with devotion; the other, 
prouder, in a pose of stern indignation and 
manly defense. Background: sunset, church, 
and ruins. This is it in a few words, badly 
expressed. But I had better add that ali of it is 
extremely simple, extremely carefully com- 
posed, extremely meticulous. Will I really ex- 
ecute it?" (diary, October 17, 1907). 

Boccioni's concept is embodied in this 
drawing, which contains ali the elements he 



described. This composition, with its division 
into three compartments, was repeated in a 
small oil painting on panel (private collection), 
which seems to have been intended as the 
working sketch for the definitive picture. He 
appears, however, to have gone no further; 
the catalogue for the posthumous exhibition 
of 1916-17 included the present work, de- 
scribed as the "sketch for the unexecuted trip- 
tych Homage to Mother." To judge by the 
measurements written at the bottom of the 
drawing (85 centimeters for the wings and 135 
for the centrai panel [33 V2 and 53Vs inches, 
respectively]), the artist planned a large and 
ambitious work. The small oil painting is 
executed with broad and swift brushwork and 
differs in some respects from the drawing. The 
settings for the three personages are rather dif- 
ferent, and the overall size of the side panels 
has been reduced. 

The triptych format recurs often in Boc- 
cioni's works. The first sketches from his 
Roman period include rough drawings for a 
painting divided into three parts. As late as 
1911, when he painted the celebrated trilogy 
States of Mind (no. 56), Boccioni defmed the 
work as a triptych, even though the three 
canvases are physically independent. 

It is likely that Boccioni drew inspiration 
for Homage to Mother from paintings he had 
recently seen: "The exhibition of the Divi- 
sionists in Paris, extremely interesting. Mar- 
velous canvases by Segantini, very daring ones 
by Previati, worthy enough ones by Fornara 
and others. They have given me the decisive 
push. Balla is over and done with" (diary, 
October 17, 1907). There were in fact trip- 
tychs among the works exhibited by those art- 
ists; in any event, Boccioni appears to have 
been struck by the Divisionists' pictorial sen- 
sitivity and by their rapport with nature and 
their ideals of art, and he seems to have de- 
cided to follow their lead. 

exhibition: Milan 1916-17, no. 36 (Studio per il 
trittico in nero Veneriamo la madre) 

literature: Taylor 1961b, no. 15; Archivi del Fu- 
turismo 1962, no. 114; Bruno 1969 (in margin at no. 
76); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 291 



36 




37 




38 



La Signora Massimino 1908 



Oiì on canvas 

48 3 /s x 591/2 in. (123 x 151 cm.) 
Signed top right: U. Boccioni 
Collection Loris Fontana, Milan 



The history of this painting is recounted by 
Boccioni in his diary, where he describes the 
various stages of the work and the crises he 
underwent in the months when the painting 
was taking form. In one of the final phases 
Boccioni states his dissatisfaction with the re- 
sult, especially from the standpoint of form. 

On December 21, 1907, he wrote: "Met 
Signor Massimino and his wife; nice. Doing 
portrait of both 1 . 25 X 1 . 50. They pay costs. " 
On Christmas Ève, Boccioni began work on 
one of the paintings: 'Tve started the portrait 
of Signora Massimino. I feel ali around me a 
slight distrust about my ability in spite of ali 
the lady's goodness, patience, and politeness. 
I'm doing the best I can. " On January 8, 1908, 
he noted: "Snow. I've started coloring the por- 
trait of Signora Massimino. . . . I'm feeling 
much calmer as we go along but very far from 
the strong execution I dream of." On Febru- 
ary 13, after a period of uncertainty and anxi- 
ety, Boccioni wrote: "Tomorrow I think I'il 
work. Next week I'il get back to Signora 
Massimino's portrait. Nice lady. It's odd that 
with her I enjoy being dose to a young per- 
son. The portrait will turn out ali right, but I 
must confess that never have I been more per- 
severing in doing a work and never have I 
found myself more disoriented than with this 
one. Why? Signor Massimino is courteous and 
has a robust frankness that is likable. But as 
always I keep waiting from one day to the 
next for the vulgar note that will make me 
disgusted with it ali. He is 29 years old, she 
24, and they have a IV2 year old baby, a big 
bouncing boy, although at first sight he looks 
sort of ugly. They are cairn people who know 
how to take life as they have been taught with 
a tendency to improvement without getting 
too excited about it. They love each other be- 



cause they are loved, perhaps they respect each 
other or rather try not to look into anything 
deeply so as not to upset their quiet lives." 

After reading Previati's La tecnica della 
pittura, Boccioni decided to go to see him: 
" After quite a while I made up my mind and 
paid a visit to Gaetano Previati. He received 
me with the greatest courtesy and we talked 
for three hours! Ali the things we talked about! 
Such faith! What a difference between him and 
Balla, of whom he spoke very highly. I told 
him about my struggles, and it scared him to 
learn that besides the struggles of Art I also 
have to struggle to make a living! . . . 

"I found him in agreement on almost ev- 
erything. He is a soul full of faith and cour- 
age. He knows that he is regarded with scorn 
but this does not dismay him. He did not want 
to come and see the painting of Signora 
Massimino but I don't remember the reason; 
it seems to me he said he might wound me 
without it doing me any good whatsoever" 
(diary, March 2, 1908). 

On March 16 Boccioni reported his im- 
pressions of Signora Massimino: "I worked 
little and have waited without too much en- 
ergy to give the final touches to Signora 
Massimino's portrait. I wasn't mistaken in call- 
ing her a little soul capable of improvement. 
The more I talk to her the more I realize this. 
The strongest sign is the warmth with which 
she talks about or listens to things that in- 
volve the mysteries of the inner life. Not great 
mysteries but nevertheless sufficient to dem- 
onstrate the tension and lively attention of her 
little soul. As in ali women, I have found in 
her that firm belief in some fundamental idea 
that serves them as a base. I think women have 
a much stronger sense of their personality than 
men." 



39 



On March 18 Boccioni considered the 
painting's merits: "Today 1*11 go on with Si- 
gnora Massimino's portrait — I hope willingly. 
Who knows what this wretched portrait will 
add up to? I'm sure it's a step forward, but 
what an effort! Such poverty of resources, such 
a distance between what I wanted to do and 
what I've done. I leave it so as not to spoil it 
further. The only good thing about it is the 
perseverance. It lacks skill, emotion, original- 
ity: Ali it shows is my strong stomach, which 
didn't turn at such miserable results. Tve 
scraped away the head perhaps thirty times; I 
have moved the composition around some ten 
times. One day when I'd fìnished the whole 
iron balustrade, which throws a shadow on 
the piazza (and with such difficulties of pro- 
portion . . . ), I found the entire perspective of 
the windows to be wrong. ... I wavered a day 
and a night and then scraped the whole thing 
and moved everything around. This has been 
repeated for the armchair, for the chair, for 
the figure, for the hands, for everything! I'm 
the only one who knows with what firm 
awareness I began. Yet you can see how blindly, 
foolishly, asininely I proceeded! Now it's al- 
most fìnished or rather I don't know what 
more to do on it, and I let it go with the near 
certainty that there's little more I could do. 
Besides I feel that what I keep doing isn't get- 
ting me anywhere! . . . Would anyone be able 
to understand what this canvas is costing me, 
which will make so many colleagues and al- 
most everyone who sees it laugh? And yet 
they're right! Has ali my struggling led me to 
a failure that brings me no material reward 
since I did it as a gift? . . . From top to bottom 
I find things to criticize. There's nothing good 
except a certain paint quality that looks very 
solid to me and promising at certain points. 
But ali the beautiful color in the world repels 
me if the forms are mean and unexpressive. 
And that's the defect of the whole painting: 
not much expression. And in art — too bad 
when it's not much! I'm going for a walk!" 

Later the same day he added: "I've fìn- 
ished the portrait of Signora Massimino, or 
rather I'm dropping it because I don't know 



what else to do to it." But the painting contin- 
ued to torment him, and on March 31 he 
wrote: "I brought Signora Massimino's por- 
trait home. How inferior it is to what I 
dreamed of doing. Maybe I'il retouch it." 

On the next day, Aprii 1, Boccioni was 
visited by a lawyer, who after seeing his re- 
cent works — very numerous, as the artist 
declares — pointed out their uniformity. The 
artist noted his own feelings: "The same mo- 
tionless poses, constantly women next to Win- 
dows. The truth is that I, a lover of the open 
air, find in closed rooms the only place that 
comes dose to my way of seeing. I hate shad- 
ows. Light, light, light. It's painful to want 
to show one's works for which one doesn't 
have any esteem, except for a few, even to 
polite people and to have to sing one's own 
praises and sometimes see a work taken away 
for 30 francs that you shouldn't give up for a 
thousand and which will end up in some mis- 
erable little room. ..." 

On the list of works sold, in the balance 
sheet drawn up by Boccioni on August 24, he 
noted gloomily: "To Signor Innocenzo Mas- 
simino of the 'Touring Club' a portrait of his 
wife gratis; [I was paid] only the costs. Much 
conscientious work (am I wrong?) but uncer- 
tain results." 

exhibitions: Milan 1927, no. 17; Rome 1953, no. 2 
(Donna alla finestra); Venice 1958, p. 65, no. 12 (Donna 
alla finestra, 1909); Rome 1959, no. 64 (Donna alla 
finestra, ca. 1907); Venice 1960, p. 14, no. 20 (Donna 
alla finestra, 1909); Frankfurt 1963-64, no. 17 (Donna 
alla finestra, 1907); Reggio Calabria 1966, no. 2 (Ritratto 
della signora Massimino or Donna alla finestra); Verona 
1985-86, no. 52 

literature: Luzzatto 1924; Argan and Calvesi 1953, 
pi. 6 (Ritratto di donna); Calvesi 1958; Ballo 1960, no. 
45; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 28 (Donna alla 
finestra); De Grada 1962, pi. 4 (Donna alla finestra); 
Ballo 1964, no. 71; Perocco 1965, p. 103 (Ritratto della 
signora Massimino); Critica d'Arte 1965; Calvesi 1967, 
p. 48; Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 185, no. 
2252 (Donna alla finestra or La signora Massimino, 
1907-8); Bruno 1969, no. 39 (La signora Massimino 
[Donna alla finestra]); Calvesi 1971, no. 1 (Ritratto della 
signora Massimino); Perocco 1972, p. 103 (Ritratto della 
signora Massimino); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 299; 
Crispolti 1986, pi. 2 



40 



Self-Portrait (recto) 
Autoritratto 1908 

Self-Portrait (verso) 
Autoritratto 1905-1906 

Oil on canvas 

27 1 / 2 x39 3 /8in. (70x100 cm.) 
Signed and dated top right (recto): 

U Boccioni 1908 
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan 



"Since the first of the month, I have been in 
Mama's house, well away from that highly 
antipathetic landlady and feeling quite at ease. 
In that house I finished a self-portrait that 
leaves me completely indifferent" (diary, May 
13, 1908). Below this sentence Boccioni drew 
in pen, in a schematic fashion, the main lines 
of the recto composition, framing — perhaps 
in a window — the black shape of a figure be- 
tween two large black sidepieces. 

In the completed portrait the frame 
around the figure has disappeared. Thus the 
painting is an advance from his usuai compo- 
sition of a figure with its back to a window. 
Here, there is no real division between the 
figure and the space around it. There is, how- 
ever, a deep break between foreground and 
background, which is barely bridged by the 
fragment of wall at the right. This architec- 
tural element, however, serves more to dif- 
fuse light than to establish perspective. 

In this work Boccioni alludes for the first 
time to the outlying neighborhoods of Milan; 
it is thus a prelude to and anticipation of 
Boccioni's pre-Futurist paintings, with their fac- 
tories and workshops. The painting itself is a 
transitional work, its brushwork stili Division- 
ist in technique. Despite Boccioni's dissatis- 
faction with it, it is a notable precursor of 
future developments in his art. 

When the portrait was shown at the sum- 
mer exhibition of 1910 in Ca' Pesaro, Venice, 
it caught the eye of Gino Damerini, critic for 
the Gazzetta di Venezia, who admired the way 
the artist had "harmonized so well his own 



image and a background of open land and va- 
cant lots from which new factories rise." 

In the mid-1970s another self-portrait was 
discovered on the back of this canvas, which 
had been in the possession of Boccioni's friend 
Vico Baer and had been donated to the Pina- 
coteca di Brera in 1951. On stylistic grounds 
and because of the younger appearance of the 
artist, the newly found likeness appears to date 
from at least two years earlier than the 1908 
work. The picture reveals a number of uncer- 
tain compositional elements; the space is 
defined by a wall on which two small pictures 
hang. The paint itself is thick, particularly 
in the background, where there is an obvious 
concern for effects of luminosity, such as the 
reflections on the face. 

This second self-portrait was concealed 
by the crosspiece of the stretcher and was al- 
most completely covered by patches of gray 
paint that masked the face. It was not signed, 
and very likely Boccioni was not satisfied with 
the result and decided to cover part of the work 
with gray paint. In 1979 the rediscovered pic- 
ture was cleaned by the Gabinetto di Restauro 
of the Brera by scraping and the application 
of solvents. One can note, nonetheless, deep 
crackling on the face, hand, and brush han- 
dles, where the coat of gray paint had been 
applied. 



exhibitions: No. 20a — Brunate 1909 (?); Venice 
1910, no. 18; Milan 1916-17, no. 50 (or 56, 297, 225, 
309); Rome 1953, no. 3; Venice 1958, p. 65, no. 6; 
Rome 1959, no. 65; Verona 1959; Winterthur 1959, 
no. 65; Venice 1960, p. 14, no. 18; Paris 1960-61, no. 
27; New York 1961, pp. 24, 142, no. 23; Venice 1966, 
p. 10, no. 13; Milan 1970, no. 126; Milan 1973-74, 
no. 29; Dusseldorf 1974, no. 37; Milan 1982-83, nos. 
24-25; Verona 1985-86, no. 83 

literature: No. 20a — Difesa 1910a; Gazzetta di 
Venezia 1910d; Brizio 1939, p. 496; Argan and Calvesi 
1953, pi. 4; Calvesi 1958a, p. 150; Ballo 1960, no. 16; 
De Grada 1962, pi. 1; Ragghiami 1962, p. 145; Ballo 
1964, no. 118; Perocco 1965, p. 99; Calvesi 1967, p. 
76; Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 190, no. 2333; 
Bruno 1969, cover, no. 62; Perocco 1972, p. 99; Kozloff 
1973, p. 48; Birolli 1983, cover, no. 2; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, nos. 44, 303; Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 34, 
ili. 17; Ballo 1984, nos. 32-34 



41 




42 



Aprii Evening 
Sera d'aprile 1908 



Oil on canvas 

19 3 / 4 xl9 3 /4in. (50X50 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: U. Boccioni 908 

Museo Civico di Belle Arti (Collection Chiattone), Lugano 



On Aprii 19, 1908, Boccioni wrote in his diary: 
"I worked quite well ali morning. I think I 
am making progress in the mechanics of using 
the brush. What terrible stuff, paint! I went 
back to Previati's and we talked for a couple 
of hours. What experience and what a good 
soul! The urge to paint some idea hit me again. 
From memory I did a rainy landscape titled 
Aprii Evening, but I'm afraid I was not able 
to observe it sufficiently. If I paint from 
memory, I have the impression of becoming 
uniform and not very penetrating. Moreover 
I don't work with the same anxiety I feel when 
it's from life. I have observed nonetheless that 
the work holds together better and lets me 
bring out the element on which the subject's 
emotional force hinges." 

Simple as it is, compared with Boccioni's 
other landscapes from the same period, this 



painting is interesting for the way in which 
he has constructed the space. A row of houses 
and factories stretches across the background 
and tapers off to the rear; a line of cherry trees 
cuts obliquely across the picture, and a low 
wall in the foreground is laid out with slightly 
emphasized foreshortening, setting up an un- 
usual viewpoint for this glimpse of the out- 
skirts of a Lombard city. Boccioni plays with 
color for its luminous effects, and the tiny 
tesselated tonalities and elongated brushstrokes 
are diffused and irradiated, conveying the sen- 
sation of a humid atmosphere. 

literature: Veronesi 1955, p. 247 (Primavera alla 
periferia di Milano); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 24 (Primavera alla periferia di Milano); Ballo 1964, 
no. 105; Bruno 1969, no. 61 a; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 307 



Studyfor "The Story of a Seamstress": Sewing Machine 
Macchina da cucire 1908 

Pencil on paper 

9 3 / 8 x6 1 /2in. (23.8 x 16.5 cm.) 

Signed bottoni right: U. Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



This drawing is one of the numerous prepa- 
ratory studies for the painting The Story of a 
Seamstress (Romanzo della cucitrice), painted in 
1908 and submitted, together with Lombard 
Countryside (no.23A),to theMylius competi- 
tion at the Permanente di Milano. It received 
a rather cold reception from the critics, who 
dismissed the subject as old-fashioned and con- 



ventional without remarking on the work's 
exceptional technical fmeness. 

Boccioni's model was Ines, with whom 
he maintained a complicated amorous relation- 
ship for some ten years. When he began to 
sketch out the composition, he saw that once 
again he was using an image that had become 
habitual for him, a woman in an interior in 



44 



Story of a Seamstress (Romanzo di una cucitrice), 1908. Oil on 
canvas, 59X67 in. (150x170 cm.). Private collection 



front of a window: "There is nothing new 
about it unfortunately; indeed it is a motif I 
have been criticized for repeating too often, 
and the fact is, I want this picture to sum up 
and write finis to the past period" (diary, May 
13, 1908). By May 28 the painting was al- 
most finished: "I saw it white; I imagined it 
silvery; I painted it red! ! ! Now I am taking it 
in hand again but I don't understand it at ali. I 
prepared the drawing with great ease, drew 
the details with the utmost indifference. Look- 
ing at the figure, it seems to me drawn realis- 
tically (though I always have in mind a certain 
ideal figure) in a way that recalls Previati. Per- 
haps that comes from eliminating the marine 
colors and utilizing only vermilion. Began with 
the window empty, making much of the de- 
tail (paltry, perhaps) of a window with red 



shutters on the house opposite, with vases on 
the sili and inside. Now I have changed ev- 
erything, put the flowers on the ledge under 
the window, thereby covering the window op- 
posite. I was forgetting to say that I am stili 
changing the figure toward what seems to me 
reality. " 

The painting shows a young woman in 
dressing gown reading in front of a window. 
A sewing machine and a chair are the only 
furnishings visible in the room. For every de- 
tail Boccioni prepared a precise drawing, and 
these must have been used to formulate the 
pictorial space. 

literature: Taylor 1961, no. 35; Archivi del Fu- 
turismo 1962, no. 107; Bruno 1969 (in margin at no. 
40); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 312 



46 



23a. Lombard Countryside 

Campagna lombarda 1908 



Oil on canvas 

36 5 /s x 55 Vs in. (93 x 140 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni left: Umberto Boccioni A. 1908 
Museo Civico di Belle Arti (Collection Chiattone), Lugano 



B. Studyfor "Lombard Countryside" (recto) 
Studio per Campagna lombarda 1908 

C. Studies with Script (verso) 

Pencil on paper 

6^8X4% in. (15.6xll.4cm.) 

Signed bottoni right (recto): Umberto Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

On May 13, 1908, while stili at work on The 
Story of a Seamstress, Boccioni wrote in his diary 
of starting a new picture: "I have prepared 
the canvas for a landscape for another compe- 
tition but so far have come up with nothing." 
Fifteen days later he had found his subject: 
"Mornings I get up at six, or a little earlier or 
a little later. I go out in the country, where I 
am preparing the studies for a landscape. . . . 
I am making small drawings on the side after 
having dashed down the overall idea for form 
and color on the canvas. While the sketch is 
drying, I prepare the details. When I do these 
tasks, I feel uncertain if the rush of emotion 
that suggested the picture to me really existed 
— or if it is sincere and strong and originai 
enough to convince me to move on to the 
canvas." 

On June 15 he noted that he was finding 
it easier to work on this picture than on the 
woman reading in The Story of a Seamstress. 
"Not only does the landscape keep me more 
entertained, and I put in less effort doing it, 
but it also pleases me more and I am more 
sure of what I am doing. " After another twelve 
days, shortly before finishing the picture, he 
remarked: "In spite of everything I feel my 
works are coming along quite well. The land- 
scape strikes me as stronger [than The Story of 
a Seamstress]. I feel I have put everything I can 
into it. . . . Even if it doesn't win, there will 



not be many of us painting this way. We shall 
see. I am praying to the Great Mother to give 
me during these last days [before the compe- 
tition] the strength and love to keep going sin- 
cerely and serenely right to the end." 

For ali Boccioni's insistence that he 
wanted nothing more than to get away from 
the Divisionist approach, here he seems im- 
mersed in perfecting a technique which, as 
he seems aware, is much like that of Previati. 
However, besides taking special pains over the 
luministic rendering of his color, in the works 
of this period he was also delving deeper into 
questions of the spadai organization of his 
compositional elements. 

On the bottom of the diary page of May 
28, Boccioni drew a quick pen sketch of the 
layout of the country landscape. The study 
seen here is obviously one of the details that 
he drew while waiting for the paint to dry. 

exhibitions: No. 23 A — Milan 1908 (Sinfonia cam- 
pestre); Milan 1960, no. 4 (Campagna lombarda [Sinfonia 
campestre]}; Reggio Calabria 1983, no. 146; Verona 
1985-86, no. 54 

literature: No. 23a — Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 21; Ballo 1964, no. 134; Archivi del Divisionismo 
1968, p. 188, no. 2302; Bruno 1969, no. 59 (Campagna 
con alberi di alto Justo [Campagna lombarda: sinfonia 
campestre]); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 323 

Nos. 23b and 23c— Taylor 1961b, no. 113 (ca. 1908- 
10); Ballo 1964, no. 133; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 324 



48 



24. Countryside with Trees 

Campagna con alberi 1908 

Oil on canvas 

ll 7 / 8 x9 7 /8in. (30x25 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 908 

Museo Civico di Belle Arti 

(Collection Chiattone), Lugano 

Like the preceding painting, this one was sold 
to Gabriele Chiattone, whom Boccioni con- 
sidered as a protector and patron who could 
be relied upon to commission posters and 
illustrations that would help stave off poverty: 
"Thanks to Signor Chiattone, life runs on 
without many difficulties and lets me finish 
my pictures" (diary, June 15, 1908). There were 
arguments from time to time when Chiattone 
rejected works or obliged the artist to redo a 
poster: "And so in these last days, when I need 
ali my energy and peace of mind to continue 
with the two works for the competition [The 
Story of a Seamstress and Lombard Countryside], 
Maecenas throws on my shoulders the loath- 
some burden of a commercial job, with the 
threat of not paying me. And because I stu- 
pidly deluded myself (what else could I do?) 
that I had a fìrm supporter in him, I neglected 



other contacts and the commercial scene and 
now, in this dead season, I find myself in his 
hands. Today he didn't give me the money 
for the frames. He was supposed to advance 
it to me and didn't have it: which may be true. 
I took a good look and detected in him the 
shabby, ignorant, miserly temperament that I 
had intuitively sensed behind his fatherly kind- 
ness" (diary, June 27, 1908). 

This is one of a series of landscapes 
painted in the countryside around Milan, 
where the artist studied the relations between 
pictorial space and the effects of light. It is 
more an "impression" — as he defmed this type 
of picture — than a finished work. Here he is 
interested in working with color tonalities to 
build up an image, specifically those Veronese 
greens, cobalts, and vermilions of which he 
often spoke. 

exhibitions: Milan 1960, no. 5 (Dintorni di Milano 
[Motivo agreste]); Reggio Calabria 1983, no. 147 

literature: Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 33 (Alberi); 
Veronesi 1955, no. 12, p. 248; Archivi del Futurismo 
1962, no. 32 (Paesaggio, 32x35 cm.); De Grada 1962, 
no. 11 (Dintorni di Milano [Motivo agreste] , 22 X 31 cm.); 
Ballo 1964, no. 93; Bruno 1969, no. 47 (Campagna con 
alberi e contadini /Motivo agreste/Dintorni di Milano); 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 333 



25a. Peasants ai Work 

Contadini al lavoro 1 908 

Oil on canvas 
9%xl3 3 /4in. (25X35 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Museo Civico di Belle Arti 

(Collection Chiattone), Lugano 

B. Study for "Peasants ai Work" 

Studio per Contadini al lavoro 1 908 

Pencil on paper 

4 5 /8X5%in. (11.7xl4.9cm.) 

Signed bottom right: UB 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

This painting belongs to the group of small 
but very fine canvases Boccioni sold to his 
"Maecenas," the lithographer and engraver 
Gabriele Chiattone. 



Here Boccioni's brushwork has become 
more full-bodied and thick, creating a broader 
and less succinct paint surface which is stili, 
however, very much influenced by the Divi- 
sionist technique. The peasants are aligned on 
a diagonal that bisects the composition; the 
image itself is thus defined plastically by the 
compositional scheme. 

The drawing is annotated with the colors 
to be used and the warm or cold tonai values 
that could give body to the representation. 

exhibitions: No. 25a— Milan 1916-17, no. 90 (Ri- 
saiole); Milan 1960, no. 13 

literature: No. 25a— Veronesi 1955, no. 12, p. 246 
(Campagna milanese, cz. 1907); Archivi del Futurismo 
1962, no. 10 (Le coglitrici); Ballo 1964, no. 97; Bruno 
1969, no. 50 (Campagna con quattro contadini al lavoro /I 
contadini al lavoro); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 339; 
no. 25b— Taylor 1961b, no. 6 (ca. 1907); Ballo 1964, 
no. 96; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 340 



50 




25b 



26. Lombard Landscape 

Paesaggio lombardo 1908 



Oil on canvas 

15 3 / 4 x26 3 /4 in. (40X68 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 

Museo Civico di Belle Arti (Collection Chiattone), Lugano 



Here Boccioni continues to play with perspec- 
tive views with high horizons; the foreground, 
a grassy meadow, is exaggerated in relation to 
the houses and trees in the background. The long, 
frayed brushstrokes are broken up and divided 
into tiny particles of tonai nuances, creating a 
dynamic based on the lively definition of color. 



exhibitions: Milan I960, no. 3 (ili.); Reggio 
Calabria 1983, no. 151 

literature: Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 23 
{Paesaggio di campagna)', Ballo 1964, no. 135; Bruno 
1969, no. 57 {Campagna con contadini al lavoro / Paesaggio 
lombardo)', Perocco 1972, p. 99; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 347 





53 




27 



27. Passing Train 

Treno che passa 1 908 

Oil on canvas 

9X22% in. (23X58 on.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: U. Boccioni 908 

Museo Civico di Belle Arti (Collection Chiattone), Lugano 



In its proportions and composition, this can- 
vas recalls Roman Landscape (no. 2) of 1903, 
although now the landscape is viewed in the 
flattened perspective characteristic of many of 
Boccioni's works created in 1908. 

The train, belching smoke as it speeds 
along, cuts diagonally across, and further em- 
phasizes, the straight horizon line that divides 
the fields and sea from the sky. The sails of two 
boats are introduced on the left side to balance 
the composition. Thanks to the stretch of open 
sea and sky, the pictorial space does not strike 



the viewer as compressed but, on the con- 
trary, seems to expand, thereby compensat- 
ing for the elongated format of the canvas. 



exhibitions: Milan 1916-17, no. 89; Milan 1960, 
no. 9 (ili.); Reggio Calabria 1983, no. 124 

literature: Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 33; Veronesi 
1955, no. 12, p. 249; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 33 (// trenino)- De Grada 1962, no. 28 (// treno a 
vapore); Ballo 1964, no. 136; Martin 1968, no. 22; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 348 



Detailofno. 27 t> 




29 



28. Pianisi and Listener 
Pianoforte 1908 

Ink on paper 

7x7V4Ìn. (17.8xl8.4cm.) 

Signed on baseboard at left: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

Boccioni's activities as a commercial artist 
kept him alert for new formai solutions. In 
his search for an incisive graphic style, he 
studied the works of Dùrer, Rembrandt, and 
Beardsley: "I have spent two extremely agi- 
ta ted nights full of mad ideas and dreams. I 
cannot deny that this is the effect of the two 
books with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley 
that I have had in my hands for the past two 
days. One is a sort of monograph on him by 
Arthur Simon [Symons], the other a collec- 
tion of literary texts illustrated by this ex- 
tremely originai artist. What I have read about 
him has had a great impact on me. His illus- 
trations have made me realize how inferior I 
am, not only concerning form but also in the 
necessary, continuous, uninterrupted energy 
of the head that guides the hand. I confess 
that for some time now I have had the sensa- 
tion more and more clearly that my hand does 
not obey my head, that something (how orig- 
inai, I don't know) is beginning to emerge 
out of the chaos of ideas and forms. I say this 
at twenty-five and a half, and Beardsley died 
at twenty-six, a celebrated illustrator, musi- 
cian, writer, poet! 

"I fmd in this artist a potential that Previati 
counseled me to aim for in these words: Let 
yourself go, you need to let yourself go as 
much as possible. That is something com- 
pletely lacking in me. The worry — or more the 
fear — that I won't draw and shade and color 



well (which means according to everything 
that tradition and teaching have drummed into 
me): That is the great obstacle to spreading 
my wings. 

"Constant study from life, the awareness 
of my own inferiority in reproducing it as com- 
pared with what I see, having never worked 
directly from my imagination — ali this means 
that the few ideas that come to me have ended 
up stillborn for fear of executing them badly. 
I am fìlled with the utmost uncertainty: If I see 
a subject, as happened with the Giardino chiuso, 
I don't know how to execute it: in oils? pen? 
pastel? Could this possibly be pettier and more 
paltry? It is terror of the material that stifles 
me" (diary, Aprii 25, 1908). 

The present drawing was probably done 
in response to the demands of customers 
whom Boccioni defined as "commercial. " This 
was likely a first effort; in a private collection 
there is a more complete version, which is 
filled with decorative elements, ranging from 
a neoclassicizing linear design on the rear wall 
to an exaggerated contrast between blacks and 
whites on the ornamentai floor tiling. Also in 
that version, the physiognomy of the pianist 
is more synthetic and abstracted. The same 
squared-off face is found in another study — 
also in the Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, 
New York — which only depicts the pianisti 
head. The example shown here, however, 
comes closest to Beardsley's characteristic way 
of drawing and to his concern for striking a 
balance of contrasts among black, white, and 
gray. 



literature: Taylor 1961b, no. 13 (ca. 1907); Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 101 (Pianista e cantante); Ballo 
1964, no. 348 (1910); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 363 



29. Kneeling Allegorical Figure 

Figura allegorica inginocchiata 1908 

Ink and pencil on paper 

9V4X7 5 / 8 in. (23.5 X 19.4 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



57 



To gain a source of income Boccioni occu- 
pied himself with graphic works for several 
months during 1908. The present drawing was 
probably intended as a heading for an adver- 
tisement or as a title-page decoration. The fe- 
male figure, kneeling with arms outstretched 
in supplication, conveys a state of tragic des- 
peration, an effect created in part by the paint- 
erly use of ink. 

Boccioni put a great deal of himself into 
his commercial art activity, which afforded him 
the opportunity to probe more deeply into his 
studies of perspective and to examine the re- 



lationship of small details to overall composi- 
tion. Such commissions were often the occa- 
sion to explore the sinuous style of drawing 
so much a feature of Symbolist graphic art 
— that is the case in this sketch, which is not 
without echoes of classical imagery as well. 

On another sheet in the same collection 
there is a very summary pencil sketch of the 
same motif, a first idea for this ink drawing. 

literature: Taylor 1961 b, no. 56; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 121; Ballo 1964, no. 139; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 367 



Agitated Crowd Surrounding a High Equestrian Monument 
(recto) 

Folla intomo al monumento equestre 1908 

Fragment of a City Pian (verso) 

Ink and pencil on paper 
14 1 / 4 x9 1 /2in. (36.2X24.1 cm.) 

Signed and dated top right (recto): Umberto Boccioni 908 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



This equestrian monument, sketched in sche- 
matic fashion, seems to derive from that of 
Cansignorio della Scala, one of the Scaligere 



overlords commemorated in a group of Gothic 
tombs in the churchyard of Santa Maria Antica 
in Verona. Cansignorio, son of Mastino II, 




30b 



58 



ordered his mausoleum to be built during his 
lifetime, but at his death in about 1375, it was 
not yet finished. Designed by Bonino da 
Campione, it is the most ambitious and richly 
ornamented of the Scaligere tombs. High up, 
on the truncated hexagonal pyramid of the 
monument, a six-sided plinth supports an 
equestrian statue. 

The swift and dashing character of 
Boccioni's drawing comes from his applica- 
tion of ink with a brush, treating it like tem- 
pera. In various drawings of this period 
Boccioni exploited the same ascending com- 
positional scheme, and the idea of a chaotic 
crowd at the foot of the monument is found 
in many other works of this time and later 
and would culminate in paintings such as Riot 
in the Galleria (no. 49). Calvesi fmds stylistic 
similarities in this drawing to Edvard Munch's 



1897 lithograph Funeral March, above ali in 
the extended lines of the arms ascending to 
the base of the pedestal. 



exhibitions: New York 1973-74, no. 134; Phila- 
delphia 1980-81, no. 20; New Haven 1983, no. 15, 
p. 82 

literature: Taylor 1961 a, p. 22 (ili.); Taylor 1961b, 
no. 55; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 108; Ballo 
1964, no. 138; Calvesi 1973, no. 11; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 368 (verso no. A7) 



Studyfor "The Dream": Sheet with Three Studies of a 

Reclining Nude and a Study of a Reclining Couple 
Studio per II sogno 1 908 

Ink and watercolor on paper 
éVsxnVsm. (16.2X30.8 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom right: Umberto Boccioni 908 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



This sketch is a study for The Dream: Paolo 
and Francesca, a painting on which Boccioni 
worked in 1908-1909. The subject— the 
damned couple whom Dante consigned to the 
second circle of the Inferno — was depicted in 
the 1880s by the Symbolist Gaetano Previati, 
and Boccioni was indebted to his work. While 
the earlier picture was marked by evocative 
symbolism, in Boccioni's canvas undefmed 
masses swarm in intricate confusion in a space 
devoid of perspectival definition, a morass in 
which the bodies of the damned are thrust 
above the surface or dragged into the depths. 



The painting and the studies for it be- 
long to a moment of crisis. As early as Aprii 
1908, after being shaken by his first acquaint- 
ance with the work of Aubrey Beardsley, 
Boccioni noted in his diary that he had a pre- 
sentiment that something new, more instinc- 
tive, and as yet entirely undefmable was 
beginning to emerge in his own art. 



literature: Taylor 1961b, no. 39; Ballo 1964, no. 
157; Martin 1968, no. 17; Bruno 1969, no. 69b; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 377 



60 




61 



32. The Mother 

La madre 1909 



Ink on paper 

13x11 in. (33x28 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: U. Boccioni 909/2 
Private collection 



This portrait of the artist's mother, so formi- 
dable in its immediacy and presence, is cer- 
tainly related to the art of Dùrer, which 
Boccioni studied and deeply admired. A year 
before making this drawing, he had written in 
his diary: "Dùrer ìs immense, great, a titan; he 
is as terribile as genius can be in the act of crea- 
tion. I am awestruck on one hand by the calm- 
ness of his style, on the other by the terribilità 
of his composition, the vehemence of the tech- 
nique, which strains, distorts, deforms, yet 
moves forward toward the Ideal! How well 
he grasps everything, strikes, nails down, 
slashes, screams and then calms, caresses, pol- 



ishes, incises, refines, his vision moving far- 
ther and farther; he rests only to revive, give 
vent to his fury, and cry out! This is some- 
thing of the impression he makes on me. What 
portraits! What landscapes! What composi- 
tions! He is immense! How the imprint of his 
style makes one forgive certain overly realis- 
tic visions of his dull and graceless race!" (Feb- 
ruary 1, 1908). 

exhibition: Milan 1973-74, no. 32 

literature: Birolli 1972, p. 10; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 394 



33. Head of an Old Man 
Testa di vecch io 1 909 

Oil on wood 

15 3 / 4 x IP/sin. (40x29cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom right: U. Boccioni 3 vm 909 
Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea (Collection Boschi- 
Di Stefano), Palazzo Reale, Milan 



By 1909 Boccioni had begun experimenting 
with new ways of painting different from the 
Divisionist technique with which he had been 
working. By the end of 1908 he was moving 
away from brushwork that involved dense, 
overlapping colors and was painting in a 
broader, looser fashion. The search for his own 
style was extremely difficult, and his anguish 
is evident in one of the last passages he would 
write in his diary: "Is it possible that I may 
have to give up, I, who torture myself ali day 
long to make my life and my art kneel down 



in sincerity before Nature, and that those whom 
I see are cheerful, well dressed, happy (at least 
they seem so to me) should win out? Must ali 
my hopes vanish this way? And what will I 
do then with my life?" (July 28, 1908). On 
August 24 Boccioni expressed his thoughts, 
feelings, and worries to his diary for the last 
time, thus ending that self-exploration of his 
inner and outer life. 

The present painting, with its violent 
color and rapidly painted, closely packed fields, 
has notable stylistic similarities in both pal- 



62 



ette and technique to the work of the Expres- 
sionists, which seems to have particularly 
interested Boccioni during this period. 

The following appears on the back of the 
panel: "Umberto Boccioni — Via Adige 23 — 
Milano — L. 0,80." Most likely the inscrip- 
tion dates from Boccioni's one-man show in 
the summer of 1910 at Ca' Pesaro in Venice, 
where this was one of the forty-two works he 
exhibited. This would explain the indication 
of its price, eighty lire, as well. 



The painting was acquired in 1939 from 
the Galleria Cairola in Milan by Gaetano 
Boschi, a passionate collector of contempo- 
rary art who later left his collection to the 
Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan. 

exhibitions: Venice 1910, no. 9; Milan 1974, pp. 16, 
17; Verona 1985-86, no. 60 

literature: Precerutti-Garberi 1974, pp. 16, 17; 
Caramel, Fiorio, and Pirovano 1980, pp. 26-27, 
no. 235; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 408 



Interior with the Artist's Mother at Work 
Interno con la madre che lavora 1909 

Oil on wood 

12 5 /8X9%in. (32X25 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: U. Boccioni 1909 
Private collection. Courtesy Galleria dello Scudo, Verona 



Boccioni gave this small painting to Nino 
Barbantini, the critic and director of Ca' Pesaro 
in Venice, who had invited the artist to ex- 
hibit in the rooms of the palazzo on the occa- 
sion of the fìfth annual summer exhibition. 
This was Boccioni's first one-man show, and 
he was always grateful for irto Barbantini. 
The meeting between the artist and the critic 
took place in the first months of 1910, as 
Barbantini recalled in an unpublished article: 
"I met Boccioni at the beginning of 1910, one 
day when we were introduced on the Merce- 
ria, and I saw in him a lean, alert face, strong 
and attentive, tenacious and pugnacious, ready 
to laugh; frankly, the face — in my opinion — of 
a mechanic. His dynamic theories and his 
works, contrived like machines, and also the 
rapidity of his drawings and gestures, may 
have been related to the impression I had of 
him." The show opened on July 16, 1910, 
with a great publicity campaign organized by 



the Futurists, who had already formed them- 
selves into a group; it closed on October 20. 
It was received with a certain reserve by the 
press, which was expecting more explosive, 
"Futurist" works, when in fact the works 
shown had been painted long before the sign- 
ing of the manifesto. 

In a letter, written at the closing of the 
show, Boccioni invited Barbantini to choose 
one of his paintings: "Please accept one of the 
small works, for which as I recali you stated a 
preference, and keep it in memory of me and 
as a token of my gratitude." In another letter, 
which can be dated to the end of October, 
Boccioni wrote to Barbantini: 'Tm glad you 
kept the little impression of the interior with 
my mother at work. To me too it seemed good 
and I'm glad that it's with you." 

Like the Head of an Old Man (no. 33), 
this painting belongs to a time of new artistic 
growth toward a more expressionistic phase. 



65 



The small Divisionist brushstrokes are enlarged 
to the point of becoming streaks of color and 
light. Boccioni is trying to abandon, as he 
wrote to Barbantini, that "insistence on ve- 
ristic details" that had bound him to Balla's 
teaching. 

exhibitions: Vertice 1910, no. 3 (or nos. 6, 15, or 16 
[Impressione]); Milan 1924, no. 15 (La madre che cuce); 
Venice 1948, no. 24 (Figura); Veni ce 1958, p. 65, no. 
11 (Interno: Mamma che lavora); Venice 1960, p. 14, 



no. 23 (Interno: Mamma che lavora); Verona 1971, no. 
16 (La madre che cuce); Venice 1984; Verona 1985-86, 
no. 61 



literature: De Grada 1962, no. 53 (Interno: Mamma 
che lavora); Ballo 1964, no. 229 (Interno: Mamma che 
lavora); Perocco 1965, p. 112 (Interno: Mamma che 
lavora); Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 191, no. 
2347 (Interno: Mamma che lavora); Bruno 1969, no. 77 
(Interno: la Mamma che lavora); Perocco 1972, p. 112 
(Interno: Mamma che lavora); Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 409; Ballo 1984, no. 42 (ili.) 



The Foltzer Factory 
Fabbrica Foltzer 1908-1909 

Oil on canvas 

10x461/2 in. (25.5xll8cm.) 
Private collection 



The extremely unusual format of this canvas 
was dictated by the shape of the building de- 
picted, and in ali likelihood the work was com- 
missioned by Emilio Foltzer, the owner of this 
plant which turned out lubricating oils and 
greases. The commission is likely to have come 
to Boccioni through Gabriele Chiattone for 
whom he produced numerous publicity post- 
ers in 1908. 

Because of the way in which the long, 
low building is disposed within the pictorial 
space, the choice of a view from above, and 
the return to Divisionist brushwork, the pie- 
ture can be considered a forerunner of the 
views of urban outskirts Boccioni would paint 
in 1909. In style and subject it can be dated to 
late 1908 or early 1909. 

In the first months of 1907, after his trips 
to Paris and Russia, Boccioni had begun to 
feel an urge to seek out new subjects more 
appropriate to the modem age: "I feel I want 
to paint what is new, the product of our in- 
dustriai time. I am nauseated by old walls, 
old palaces, old subjects based on reminis- 



cences: I want to have my eye on the life of 
our day. Fields, quiet things, pretty little 
houses, woods, flushed and strong faces, 
workers' limbs, weary horses, etc. — ali that 
emporium of modem sentimentalism has well 
and truly wearied me. Indeed, modem art as 
a whole strikes me as old. I want what is new, 
expressive, formidable! I want to cancel out 
ali the values I have known, know, and am 
losing sight of, and this so as to remake, to 
reconstruct on new bases! Ali the past, mar- 
velously grand as it is, oppresses me. I want 
what is new!" (diary, March 14, 1907). 

The present painting, with its unusual and 
thoroughly new subject, is worthy of special 
note as one of the first successful essays in 
what the artist thought of as an authentically 
"modem" direction. 



exhibition: Reggio Calabria 1983, no. 172, pp. 
137-39 

literature: Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 419 



67 




35 



68 




69 




70 



Detail ofno. 36 D> 



Morning 
Mattino 1909 



Oil on canvas 

23 5 /8X21 5 /sin. (60X55 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
Private collection 

This canvas, along with Twilight (no. 37), was 
shown in late 1909 at the Famiglia Artistica, 
an annual exhibition held in Milan; both had 
probably been recently finished. La Perseveran- 
za noted "the bold and youthful violence of 
hues" in the paintings; II Secolo judged them 
"a daring exercise in luminosity." 

The violent colors, resolutely juxtaposed, 
dissolve and tend to be extended in impetu- 
ous streaks, giving this work a fìnished bai- 
ance. The diagonal road breaks the aggressive 
bands of color. The perspective construction 
recalls previous works; the foreshortening from 
above is related to the background in the por- 
trait of Signora Massimino (no. 19). Boccioni 
appeared to be dissatisfied with the Expres- 
sionist approach that had occupied him in re- 
cent months, and he returned with increased 



perseverance to working out visions of light 
and atmospheric impressions, concerns that 
recali French painting of the last quarter of 
the nineteenth century. 

exhibitions: Milan 1909-1910, no. 170; Milan 
1910, no. 145; Venice 1910, no. 2; Milan 1916-17, 
no. 52; Milan 1924 (Sobborgo di Milano; listed as 
no. 23 [Cavallo di tramo]?); Frankfurt 1963-64, no. 
19; Venice 1966, p. 10, no. 16 (// mattino); Rome 
1982, no. 23 (Periferia); Milan 1982-83, no. 42 (// 
mattino); Verona 1985-86, no. 65 

literature: Perseveranza 1909; Secolo 1909; 
Costantini 1933, p. 129; Severini 1933, p. 354 
(Paesaggio suburbano); Argan and Calvesi 1953, pi. 7; 
Archivi del Futurismo 1962, p. 257, no. 88 (Periferia); 
Ballo 1964, no. 232 (// mattino); Calvesi 1967, p. 20; 
Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 190, no. 2324 
(// mattino or Periferia); Martin 1968, no. 68; Bruno 
1969, no. 93 (Strada di periferia [con due carri a cavalli] 
or Studio: Il mattino); Apollonio 1970, pi. 2; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 420 



Twilight 

Crepuscolo 1909 
Oil on canvas 

35% x AVA in. (90xl20cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom right: U. Boccioni 1909 

Collection Dai Pra, Treviso 

This painting was exhibited with Morning 
(no. 36) at the Famiglia Artistica in Milan in 
1909. While Morning demonstrates an aggres- 
sive sense of color, used in its purest values, 
in Twilight the harshness of the hues is an- 
nulled by blended tonalities. The present paint- 
ing is executed with a raw Pointillism that 
allows the colors, skillfully applied in layers, 
to emerge and intersect. In Morning a sharp 
brilliant light vivifies the scene; here the city 
is enveloped in a gloomy atmosphere, and the 
veil of dusk falls over and obscures the forms 
of horses, people, and buildings. 



exhibitions: Milan 1909-1910, no. 172; Venice 1910, 
no. 12; Milan 1910-11, no. 57; Milan 1916-17, no. 
88; Venice 1966, p. 10, no. 20 (Periferia); Turin 1967, 
no. 2; Milan 1970, no. 133; Cortina d'Ampezzo 1970, 
no. 1; Milan 1971, p. 65, no. 43; Milan 1982-83, no. 
44 (Crepuscolo or Strada di periferia con cantieri edili or 
Periferia); Verona 1985-86, no. 66 

literature: Sarfatti 1917; Argan and Calvesi 1 953, 
pi. 8; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, p. 257, no. 91 
(Periferia); De Grada 1962, no. 50; Ballo 1964, no. 
235; Perocco 1965, p. 116; Archivi del Divisionismo 

1968, p. 190, no. 2334 (// crepuscolo or Periferia); Bruno 

1969, no. 94 (Strada di periferia con cantieri edili [Cre- 
puscolo]); Perocco 1972, p. 116; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 421 



72 




73 




38 



38. Factories at Porta Romana 

Officine a Porta Romana 1 909 

Oil on canvas 

29 1 /2X57 1 /8Ìn. (75x145 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
Banca Commerciale Italiana, Milan 

The composition of this painting is very sim- 
ilar to that of Twilight (no. 37), but it has been 
rendered in the strongly horizontal format Boc- 
cioni often favored. His increasing mastery of 
Divisionist technique gives great strength and 
precision to this work, in which a line of fac- 
tories and houses fades to a horizon illumined 
by strong daylight. The light is crystallized in 
innumerable beams of color that obliquely cut 
the block of buildings under construction, thus 
accentuating the foreshortened view. Boccioni 
lived in this area — Bastioni di Porta Romana 
— and here he shows its lively movement and 
the great industriai expansion of Milan. 



Factories at Porta Romana has been vari- 
ously dated 1908 and 1909, but because of its 
stylistic similarities to Twilight and its depic- 
tion of urban outskirts, a theme that Boccioni 
developed around 1909, it can be ascribed to 
the later date. 



exhibitions: Milan 1916-17, no. 88; Dusseldorf 
1974, no. 38 (1908); Milan 1973-74, no. 26; Milan 
1982-83, no. 26 (1908); Venice 1986, p. 30 (1908) 

literature: Carrà 1924, p. 3, ili. {Alle porte di 
Milano); Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 5, p. 32 (1908); 
Calvesi 1958a, pp. 150-51 (1908); Mazzariol 1958, 
p. 16; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 97 (Periferia, 
signed and dated lower right: "U. Boccioni 1909," 
fcrmerly Collection Vico Baer); De Grada 1962, 
pi. 5 (Periferia [Officine a Porta Romana]); Ballo 1964, no. 
120 (1908); Calvesi 1967, no. 13, p. 55; Martin 1968, 
no. 27; Bruno 1969, no. 63 (Officine a Porta Romana di 
Milano / La strada di periferia / Periferia- Il meriggio, 1 908) ; 
Perocco 1972, p. 102; Tisdall and Bozzolla 1977, no. 
14 (1908); Del Guercio 1980, p. 28; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 423; Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 38, ili' 19 



74 



39a. Portrait of a Young Woman 
Ritratto femminile 1909 



Pastel on paper 

21 t /4X22 7 / 8 in. (54X58.1 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: U. Boccioni 909 

Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna — Ca' Pesaro, Venice 




75 



Young Woman Reading 
Donna che legge 1909 

Ink and colored chalk on paper 

16V2Xlli/ 2 in. (41.9X29.2 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom right: U. Boccioni 1909 

Collection Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Slifka, New York 

In the first work, which is thought to be a por- 
trait of his sister, Boccioni returns to a favor- 
ite theme — a figure in front of a window. 
Now, however, he deepens the luministic ef- 
fect by placing the figure in front of the light 
source. The areas in shadow are emphasized 
by the burst of bright light, creating a dra- 
matic contrast that lends added forcefulness 
to the figure of the woman. Foreground and 
background work together in forced opposi- 
tion to construct this impressive image. 

Here Boccioni's mastery of pastel attains 
a new swiftness, freshness, and terseness. The 
long, boldly resolute strokes, laid on obliquely 
and without recourse to sfumato, stress the most 
important details, and the absence of chiar- 
oscuro and the use of white-lead highlights 
give unexpected strength to a medium usu- 
ally confined to pale and delicate tints. Thanks 
to the swiftness of the technical handling, the 
entire image is thrown into movement and is 
caught up in a dynamic whirling of light. 

The second work shares these qualities 
and may also be a portrait of Boccioni's sister. 

exhibitions: No. 39a — Venice 1910, no. 31(?) 
{Leggendo); Venice 1958, p. 65, no. 10 (Sorella che 
legge); Venice 1960, p. 14, no. 24 (La sorella); Venice 
1966, p. 9, no. 4 (La sorella che legge); Mestre 1982, 
p. 14 (Ritratto della sorella che legge); Reggio Calabria 
1983, no. 176; Verona 1985-86, no. 63 

literature: No. 39a— Taylor 1961b, no. 78; De 
Grada 1962, no. 23 (La sorella controluce); Ballo 1964, 
no. 226 (La sorella); Perocco 1965, p. 110 (La sorella 
che legge); Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 192, 
no. 2372 (La sorella che legge); Bruno 1969, no. 86 (La 
sorella [con un libro]); Perocco 1972, p. 110 (La sorella 
che legge); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 435; Ballo 1984, 
no. 22 (La sorella) 

No. 39b— Taylor 1961b, no. 130; Ballo 1964, 
no. 176 (Figura femminile); Bruno 1969, no. 82c; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 450 



76 



who sits with a young woman, guarding a 
fìre. Symbols of death and rebirth are evident 
in this work which is also known as Allegory 
of Life. Death, in the guise of the reaper, is 
accompanied by the seven lamps, which in 
the Apocalypse represent the seven spirits of 
God and,~ since seven is the number of perfec- 
tion, express the divine absolute. 

There is a limited palette, in which greens 
and violets prevail, and the technique is stili 
tied to Previati's Divisionism, which Boccioni 
did not abandon until about 1911. The paint- 
ing was in the Sommaruga collection in Milan; 
above the signature there is a partially obliter- 
ated dedication: "A Federico So. . . " 

exhibitions: Prato 1971-72, pi. 5; Reggio Calabria 
1983, no. 181 

literature: Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 454 




40. The Reaper 

II falciatore 1909 

Oil on canvas 

24 3 /8X36 1 / 4 in. (62X92 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom right: U. Boccioni 1909 
Private collection, Milan 

This is the only known work in which Boc- 
cioni represents an allegorical subject. Stili 
caught up in symbolist concerns, he persisted 
in the search for images to express his ideal- 
ism. The theme of this atypical painting is dif- 
ficult to determine. A procession of seven 
women in long mantles, each carrying a flam- 
ing lamp in her hands, files diagonally from 
the center toward the background and disap- 
pears in an indistinct halo at the upper right. 
A reaper, his face hooded, crosses the field 
with a scythe; he advances toward an old man, 



40 



Three Women 

Tre donne 1909-1910 



Olì on canvas 

70 7 /sX52in. (180xl32cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom right: U. Boccioni 1909-10 
Banca Commerciale Italiana, Milan 



This painting, which portrays Boccioni's 
mother and sister with, in the center, Ines, his 
longtime intimate (see no. 45), was exhibited 
in the summer of 1910 at the Permanente in 
Milan. La Provincia di Brescia remarked: "The 
Boccioni is interesting. In homage to Futur- 
ism, which does not care for nudity, he has 
painted some women in chemises. Good things 
technically but bad aesthetically. " The Corriere 
della Sera noted: "Boccioni exhibits a painting 
of three women, the expressions of whose faces 
show remarkable qualities of observation." 

In 1911 the painting was shown at the 
Mostra d'Arte Libera, held in the pavilions of 
the former Ricordi factory, in which the Fu- 
turists enthusiastically participated. Sarfatti 
(1917) recalled: "He exhibited the large can- 
vas Three Women, painted with unconventional 
luminism, not as it had congealed in the brief 
yet already rigid tradition of Italian Division- 
ism, but agile and ductile, consistent with pic- 
torial emotion. A sense of measure, a cairn 
and pleasant moderation of forces, imposed 
the restraint of art on the apparent frenzy of 
color and rendered it more intimate and pro- 
found. In the diverse grace of their supple bod- 
ies and fair heads — one, the pale ovai of whose 
face is shaded by ineffable melancholy, the 
other energetic and florid — the two young 
women press around the seated figure of the 
old mother: His strong, good mother, stili so 
strong in the pain that is destroying her. [One 
sees] the great adoration of the son and the 
tirelessness of the model, who inspired some of 
his powerful paintings and sculpture." 

The journalist Attilio Teglio interviewed 
Boccioni in March 1911, when the artist was 
already divesting himself of the Divisionist 
sensibility and was working on The City Rises 
(no. 50). Teglio noted: "He has heard himself 
praised for a work when he has already be- 
come detached from it, already gone beyond 



it. 'The Three Women!' they said to him, 
'that's the path you must follow if you want 
to triumph.' 'But what path, what form, what 
triumph?' he replied/I always try newer, more 
difficult paths: My spirit is not uniform, it's 
multiform, and my work is generated by my 
spirit.'" 

In a letter written from Pallanza around 
July 20, 1916, less than a month before his 
death, and addressed to his friend Vico Baer 
to whom the painting belonged, Boccioni 
seemed pleased with the interest shown in his 
work: "The marchesa di Casanova wants to 
come to Milan to visit your house and see my 
paintings. I took my album and the Three 
Women caused a furor!" 

Three Women marks a moment of transi- 
tion in the artist's work, the bridge from the 
suburbs of Milan to the idealistic vision of The 
City Rises. This painting is animated by an 
iridescent light like that produced by a prism. 
Here the light is depicted in slanting rays; in 
The City Rises it will explode in an unchecked 
swirling motion. 

According to Calvesi (1967) there may 
be a relationship between Boccioni's luminism, 
in which light diffuses "immaterially like a 
wave in water," and Einstein's conception of 
the physical properties of light. 

exhibitions: Milan 1910; Milan 1916-17, (ili., 
Collection Baer, Milan), no. 55; Milan 1924, no. 30 
(Collection Baer, Milan); Milan 1933; Milan 1982-83, 
no. 48 

literature: Corriere della Sera 1910; Giarratana 
1910; Teglio 1911; Sarfatti 1916, p. 12 (Le tre donne, 
first version); Emporium 1917, p. 77; Sarfatti 1917, 
p. 43; Luzzatto 1924; Sarfatti 1924; Calderini 1927, 
p.148 (ili); Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 10, p. 32 
(Collection V. Baer, Milan); Calvesi 1958a; Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 87; De Grada 1962, no. 41 
(Le amiche [Tre donne)) (Collection Ruberl, Milan); 
Ballo 1964, no. 246; Calvesi 1967, p. 71; Bruno 1969, 
no. 102a; Perocco 1972, p. 114; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 455 



78 




41 



42. Self-Portrait 

Autoritratto 1910 



Ink and watercolor on paper 
10V4X8 3 /4Ìn. (26X22.2 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: 21-1-910 Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



This self-portrait once belonged to Ruggero 
Vasari, the Italian poet and playwright. In the 
early 1920s he moved to Berlin, where he 
spearheaded the Futurist movement and was 
the director of a gallery. In 1958, as a result of 
the interest shown by Piero Dorazio, he sold 
this pen drawing and a gouache study for The 
Drinker (no. 78) to the Winston collection (now 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York). 

In a letter to Dorazio dated January 20, 
1958, Vasari said that he had acquired the work 
in Berlin in 1922: "The picture carne from a 
Futurist exhibition in Prague. I don't remem- 
ber the name of the gallery. The picture was 
shown, along with other Italian Futurist ones, 
at the Neumann Gallery in Berlin, Kurfùr- 
stendamm 222." 



The harsh and incisive strokes in this 
drawing recali earlier works of the artist, when 
his enthusiasm for Dùrer inspired him to do 
numerous portraits. The line hollows out the 
volumes of the sharp, lean face, while the light 
infiltrates the surface areas, creating a dramatic 
feeling unrelated to the subject but indicative 
of Boccioni's search for pictorial contrasts. 

The dense strokes in the present work are 
related to Boccioni's renewed interest in en- 
graving, which led him to take up etching 
again in early 1910. 

literature: Taylor 1961b, no. 139; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 73; Ballo 1964, no. 279 
(26 X 22 cm, , formerly Collection Vasari, Milazzo); 
Bruno 1969, no. 109; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 459 



43. The Gamboloita Bridge 

Ponte di Gamboloita 1910 

Charcoal and ink on paper 
10 7 / 8 x9 3 /8in. (27.6 X 23.8 cm.) 

Signed center right : Boccioni; inscribed: Ponte di Gamboloita visto 
dalla linea ferroviaria- — sufficientemente interessante. Mattina 28 maggio 
1910. Abbastanza nuovo (Gamboloita bridge seen from railway 
line — interesting enough. Morning May 28, 1910. Fairly new) 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



This rapid sketch is interesting in its attempt 
to reproduce the sensation of movement. 
Here the representation of dynamic force is 



entrusted solely to the nimble stroke; the 
sequence of curvilinear waves conveys a feel- 
ing of displacement. This is one of Boccioni's 



80 



first works in which movement is described 
through line — a departure from the artist's 
practice of using color to embody the dynamic 
vibrations of light. 



exhibition: Milan 1916-17, no. 13 (Ponte 
Gamboloita) 

literature: Taylor 1961b, no. 112; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 181; Ballo 1964, no. 263 (pendi 
drawing); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 463 




43 



82 



Portrait of a Child with Dolls 

Ritratto di bambina fra le bambole 1910 

Pendi on paper 

19 X 13 in. (48.2X33 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: 1910 U. Boccioni 
Private collection 



This is one of a number of portraits and stud- 
ies by Boccioni of Fiammetta, the daughter 
of Margherita Sarfatti, the critic and writer 
who was a great admirer of his work. Five 
other studies are known, four of them in the 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York, 
and one in a private collection. Two of these 
show the child standing, in profile and from 
the front, and both may be sketches for this 
drawing; three others show only the face of 
the curly-haired child and may also have been 
done in preparation for the upper part of this 
composition. 

Because of its elaborate technique and 
complex subject, this drawing conveys the 



compositional and stylistic solidity more 
usually found in a painting. The child is sur- 
rounded by dolls and other toys; two stuffed 
animals — a horse and a rabbit — can be 
glimpsed in the confusion of the frayed and 
agitated strokes. The recurrent motif of the 
dolls' eyes, which form a vortex around the 
child's face, infuses the work with a dramatic 
sense of mystery and magic. 

exhibition: Reggio Calabria 1983, no. 184 

literature: Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 30; Taylor 
1961b, no. 140; Ballo 1964, no. 251; Bruno 1969, 
no. 129b; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 478 



Young Woman Reading (Ines) 
Ritratto di donna 1908-1910 

Charcoal, watercolor, and wax crayon on paper 
18V8X 131/s in. (46.7X33.3 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



This is most likely a portrait of Ines, the 
woman whom Boccioni had known since ad- 
olescence and who wrote him emotional let- 
ters, some of which, dated 1904 and sent from 
Bassano, have been found. Very little is known 
of this woman who played an important role 
in Boccioni's life; even her surname remains a 
mystery. In the painting Three Women (no. 41) 
Ines is depicted in the center between Boc- 
cioni's mother and sister;her expression is pro- 
foundly sad, and her melancholy gaze seems 
fixed on a remote dimension outside of reality. 



Boccioni renewed his relationship with 
Ines in Milan: "Is she worthy of me? Often I 
think not, but often yes. Certainly her apathy 
is incomprehensible. She doesn't see me, she 
doesn't write me, she doesn't care to find out 
whether I'm dead or alive. . . . I'm really stu- 
pidi Anyway I won't go any more until I get 
a strong proof of her love. And I won't write 
anymore because I make myself laugh. Have I 
known her for ten or eleven years? I know 
everything! I've talked to her and discussed 
everything with her; I don't know any woman 



83 



as well as I know her. . . . and for me she's an 
enigma!" (diary, February 14, 1908). Boccioni 
appears to have had a rivai for Ines; his feelings 
for her were in Constant crisis, especially since 
Ines seems not to have embodied his ideals: 
"She's much inferior to what I dream of. Only 
her kindness and the fact that Tve known her 
for so long bind me to her. But it's useless. I 
feel that it wouldn't take much to take my 
mind off her, and she provokes [this break] at 
every moment" (diary, March 23, 1908). 

From 1908 to 1910 Boccioni often used 
Ines as a model, portraying her with an ab- 
stracted gaze or shrouded in sadness. In the 
present drawing the figure appears intent on 



reading a book; Boccioni has achieved a 
graphic skill that allows him to work with a 
few charcoal lines that blur or sharpen depend- 
ing on the effects of light. The composition 
is interesting because of the low viewpoint, 
which gives a slight inclination to the figure, 
and the foreshortening, which frames the face, 
cropping the upper part of the hair. 

literature: Taylor 1961a, p. 24 (ili., 1909-1910); 
Taylor 1961b, no. 136; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 39 (Collection Callegari-Boccioni: Ines); Ballo 1964, 
no. 286; Bruno 1969, no. 114 (Busto di donna leggente/ 
Ritratto di giovane donna/ Ines); Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 480 



Study of a Man's Forearm (recto) 
Studio di avambraccio maschile ca. 1908 

Study of Extended Arms with Hands Clasped (verso) 
Studio di braccia tese con mani congiunte ca. 1908 

Pencil on paper 

SVixIlys in. (21x29.5cm.) 

Signed bottom right (recto): Umberto Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



Boccioni did numerous anatomical studies 
around 1908-1909. It is difficult to assign a 
precise date to these studies; some are related 
to more complex works, while others were 
done simply as exercises. In the present draw- 
ings, which seem to derive from Michelange- 
lo^ anatomical studies, Boccioni meticulously 
rendered muscles, achieving a strength and ten- 
sion that transcend simple description. 

Careful analysis always characterized 
Boccioni's work. When he and Severini, 
Sironi, and Costantini were students at the 



Scuola Libera del Nudo in Rome, the young 
artist filled sketchbooks with impressions, 
notes, perspectives, foreshortenings, and aca- 
demic nudes. Boccioni was to maintain this 
approach in the years that followed; even in 
his Futurist period, when his execution be- 
came very rapid, he continued to practice and 
to produce sketches and studies. 

literature: No. 46a — Taylor 1961b, no. 27 (ca. 
1907); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 165; Ballo 
1964, no. 49 (1907); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 507 
No. 46b— Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 508 



86 





' 1 



46b 



87 




47a. Seated Male Nude (recto) 

Studio di nudo maschile ca. 1908 

B. Seated Woman with a Dark Blouse (verso) 

Studio di donna seduta con camiciotto scuro ca. 1908 
Pendi on paper 
lSXlOViin. (38.1x26cm.) 

Signed top right and bottoni right (recto): UB and Boccioni 
Signed bottoni right (verso): UB 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



88 



Woman Leaning on a Chair (The Artist's Sister) 
Donna appoggiata ad una sedia ca. 1909 

Pendi on paper 

15 3 / 4 xl4 5 /8in. (40x37.1 cm.) 

Signed bottoni center: UB 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

In these drawings Boccioni reduces the fig- 
ures to unadorned lines, thus eliminating chiar- 
oscuro. The nimble and fluent strokes, espe- 
cially in the Woman Leaning on a Chair, de- 
scribe the image sculpturally, stressing the vol- 
ume and essence of the shapes. In Seated Woman 
with a Dark Blouse the contrast between figure 
and shadow (or chair) seems almost forced, 
but this dark background allows the sitter to 
emerge from the surface of the paper. 

literature: No. 47 a — Taylor 1961b, no. 97; Archivi 

del Futurismo 1962, no. 163; Ballo 1964, no. 161; 

Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 521 

No. 47b— Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 518 

No. 47c —Taylor 1961b, no. 68 (ca. 1909); Archivi 

del Futurismo 1962, no. 149; Ballo 1964, no. 202 

(1909); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 605 



47c 




48a 



48a. Study Joy "Mourning" 

Studio per II lutto 1910 

Ink on paper 

6VBX7Vsm. (15.6xl8.7cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

B. Study Joy "Momning" 
Studio per II lutto 1910 

Pendi, charcoal, blue and orange pendi, and gray wash on paper 

9Vs xl8 3 / 8 in. (23.2X46.7 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



90 



In a preparatory drawing (no. 48a) for Mourning 
Boccioni rapidly sketched a composition that 
suggests the Deposition from the Cross. The 
final composition of the painting is dose to that 
of the drawing. The second study (no. 48b) 
is a sketch of the woman in the center of the 
painting (there a mass of fiery red hair 
surrounds her face, making it stand out like a 
grotesque mask). The linear style of this draw- 
ing is more closely related to the Symbolist 
movement than to Expressionist works. 

The painting was exhibited for the first 
time at the Famiglia Artistica in late 1910. 
Argan (1953) noted the peculiarity of this 
work, which, just as Futurist ideas were being 
formulated, "deviates toward the tragic qual- 
ity of Mundi." This trait was also noted 
by Calvesi (1967), who stressed the relation 



between this tragic scene and the "themes 
explicitly symbolized [by the Norwegian 
master] in Attraction, Anxiety, Melancholy, and 
Separation." 

exhibitions: No. 48a — New York 1961, no. 26 

No. 48b— New York 1961, no. 24; New York 
1973-74, no. 195 

literature: No. 48a — Taylor 1961b, no. 165; 
Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 228 (signed lower 
right: "Boccioni, Odissea della Croce"); Ballo 1964, 
no. 370; Martin 1968, no. 44; Bruno 1969, no. 120i; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 656 

No. 48b— Taylor 1961b, no. 167; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 190; De Grada 1962, no. 57; 
Ballo 1964, no. 356; Ragghianti 1965, no. 5, 
p. 18; Bruno 1969, no. 120d; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 651 




91 




92 



Riot in the Galleria 
Rissa in Galleria 1910 

Oil on canvas 

29% X 25 Va in. (76 X 64 cm.) 
Signed top right: U. Boccioni 
Pinacoteca di Brera (Emilio and Maria Jesi Gift), 
Milan 



Some months before painting this picture, 
Boccioni had signed both the Manifesto of the 
Futurist Painters (February 11, 1910) and Fu- 
turist Painting: Technical Manifesto (Aprii 11, 
1910). In the Aprii proclamation, which is 
more articulate and complex in its exposition 
of ideas than the rather schematic document 
of February, the Futurists stated: "Everything 
is in movement, everything rushes forward, 
everything is in Constant swift change. A 
figure is never stable in front of us but is 
incessantly appearing and disappearing. Be- 
cause images persist on the retina, things in 
movement multiply, change form, follow one 
upon the other like vibrations within the space 

they traverse We desire to take our place 

again in life itself. Today 's science, rejecting 
its past, answers to the material needs of our 
time; art no less, rejecting its own past, should 
respond to the intellectual needs of our time. 
Our new awareness no longer lets us view 
man as the center of universal life. For us, a 
man's pain is interesting no less but no more 
than that of an electric bulb which, function- 
ing, suffers and endures agonies and cries out 
in the most lacerating expressions of color; 
and the musicality of the line and folds of a 
modem garment have, for us, an emotional 
and symbolic power entirely like that the nude 
had for the old masters." 

The whole poetic that would be expressed 
in the paintings of the Futurists is inherent in 
these words, although at the date the mani- 
festos were signed, their theory was not freely 
expressed through color. 

With Riot in the Galleria Boccioni began 
to confront new aesthetic concerns. The com- 
position which is traversed by force-lines that 



converge in the center, is an early, summary 
statement of the theories he would later de- 
velop on dynamism, transcendentalism, simul- 
taneity, and the compenetration of planes. 

The Technical Manifesto ateo states: "Paint- 
ing cannot subsist without Divisionism . Yet Di- 
visionism, in our concept, is not a technical 
means that can be methodically learned and 
applied. Divisionism, for the modem painter, 
must be a congenital complementarity, something 
we judge essential and indispensable. " Most 
of the works painted by Boccioni in 1910-11 
show the influence of this statement on Divi- 
sionism. He returned to what had been his 
style for many years, accentuating the violence 
of primary colors in order to achieve dyna- 
mism. The present painting is, however, one 
of the first in which Boccioni experimented 
with a Pointillist brushstroke in the manner 
of Seurat, placing small areas of color tones 
next to each other and playing on a palette of 
complementary colors; his Pointillism had pre- 
viously been linked more to late nineteenth- 
century Italian examples than to French ones. 
Here the color is transformed into light, a vi- 
olent and artificial light refracted on the in- 
side of the gallery; this illumination releases a 
charge of energy that triggers the strong ra- 
diai movement of the crowd. 

This painting was shown in late 1910 and 
early 1911 at the Famiglia Artistica in Milan 
under the title Una baruffa (A Brawl). The critic 
for La Perseveranza remarked: "The Brawl is 
set under an arcade near a café; the crowd runs, 
it gets excited, thereby exciting the shadows 
under the are lamps. " A painting by Boccioni 
entitled Brawl (Museum of Modem Art, New 
York) does exist, but it is obviously not the 
same painting described above. 

In late 1916, at the Milan retrospective of 
Boccioni's works, the present painting was 
reproduced in the catalogue under the title La 
Rissa (The Riot). This title, however, does not 
appear in the exhibition checklist; it is there- 
fore possible that Baruffa in Galleria (Brawl in 
the Galleria), listed as number 211, can be 
identified as this work. Various critics (Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962; Ballo 1964) have erro- 



93 



neously stated that the painting was exhibited 
at the Futurist shows that were held in Paris 
and other European cities beginning in Feb- 
ruary 1912. 

exhibitions: Milan 1910-1911, no. 56 (Baruffa); 
Milan 1911 (Baruffa); Milan 1916-17 (ili.: La rissa; 
listed as no. 211 [Baruffa in Galleria]^}); Milan 1924, 
no. 10 (ì)(Rissa); Venice 1952, p. 396, no. 51 (La rissa 
in Galleria, 1909); Rome 1953, no. 8; Rome 1959, 
no. 74; Venice 1960, p. 14, no. 25 (La rissa in Galleria); 
New York 1961, pp. 33, 142, no. 26; Venice 1966, 
p. 10, no. 33; Milan 1971, no. 574; Paris 1973, no. 9; 
Milan 1973-74, no. 39; Dusseldorf 1974, no. 14; Milan 
1982-83, no. 58; Verona 1985-86, no. 75; Venice 
1986, p. 110 



The City Rises 
La città sale 1910 

Oil on canvas 

78V2X II8I/2 in. (199.3X301 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
The Museum of Modem Art (Mrs 
1951), New York 



Boccioni worked for almost a year on this 
painting, initially titled Labor (Il lavoro), as we 
know from a long exchange of letters with 
his friend, the critic Nino Barbantini. 

In a letter that can be dated to August or 
September 1910, Boccioni wrote that he had 
begun work on a painting intended to repre- 
sent the modem epoch truly: "On Wednes- 
day I began one picture measuring 2 by 3 
meters and another two a little smaller than 
half of that. You see that something is really 
brewing: Let's hope for the best, and death to 
stick-in-the-mud-ism!" Late in the fall he wrote 
to Barbantini: "I am working hard. I have al- 
most finished three works. A painting three 
meters by two in which I attempted a great 
synthesis of labor, light, and movement. It 
may well be a work of transition, and / be- 
lieve one of the tasti It is done completely with- 
out models, and ali the tricks of the trade are 
sacrificed to the ultimate cause of emotional 
expression. . . . If I can do it (and I hope to) 



literature: Perseveranza 1910; Carrà 1924, p. 3 
(La rissa davanti al Campari); Carrieri 1950, p. 48; 
Ungaretti 1950, pi. 1; Valsecchi 1950 (1907?); Argan 
and Calvesi 1953, pi. 18; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
p. 264, no. 226 (La rissa in Galleria); De Grada 1962, 
pi. 10; Ragghianti 1962, p. 165, no. 365; Ballo 1964 
(2d ed., 1982: cover), no. 369; Ragghianti 1965, sect. 
64, no. 20, p.26; Bellonzi 1967, cover, pi. 53; Calvesi 
1967, p. 48; Archivi del Divisionismo 1968, p. 197, 
no. 2457; Martin 1968, no. 49; Bruno 1969, no. 121a; 
Birolli 1971, p. 140; Kozloff 1973, no. 55; Tisdall and 
Bozzolla 1977, no. 26, p. 40; Birolli 1983, no. 7; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 657; Roche-Pézard 1983, 
no. 45, ili. 21; Crispolti 1986, p. 10, pl.7 



the emotion will be presented with as little 
recourse as possible to the objects that have 
given rise to it. The ideal, for me, would be a 
painter who, wishing to represent sleep, would 
not turn his mind to the creature (man, ani- 
mal, etc.) sleeping but could, by means of lines 
and colors, bring out the idea of sleep, that is, 
sleep as something universal entirely beyond 
the mere chance factors of time and place. And 
this through purely pictorial sensations, that 
is, beautiful colors and beautiful forms . . . ." 

In a letter dated 1910 and addressed to 
"Mia cara malcontenta (eterna)" — "My dear 
(eternai) malcontenti' perhaps Ines, his long- 
time lover — Boccioni described the creative 
élan that was inducing him to retouch the pic- 
ture, to add brushmarks here and there, and 
to modify parts already painted: "Ciao cara! 
Just a quick line because I have to go and do 
battle with my huge canvas. Amore mio, if it 
comes out as I think, the world has never seen 
anything like it! I am so immersed in it that it 



. Simon Guggenheim Fund, 



94 



was fully drawn in an hour and a half. . . . 
What great leaps forward! I can say like Wagner 
to Sig. Frid: It comes out of ali my pores! 
You can't imagine how different my way of 
feeling is now when I'm working. I feel as if 
I'm really creating something, and the work 
comes to me now with a fever — I don't know 
what to think of so many works of the past 
turned out in listless and discouraged moods. 
The way I am working now resembles the 
way I worked on only two or three works in 
my life. Now I understand the fever, pas- 
sion, love, violence meant when one says to 
oneself: Create! But why wasn't it like this 
before? Maybe I really was like this, but suf- 
ferings and discouragements kept me pinned 



to earth. . . . Today unfortunately my leg hurts, 
but I hope to stretch it soon enough and to 
fling myself into work even more violently 
than yesterday. How I understand Marinetti's 
dictum: No work that lacks an aggressive char- 
acter can be a masterwork! 

"And it seems to me that my big picture 
is pretty much that. As always, working on a 
large scale, I expanded the originai idea and 
the picture has become more full of figures, 
more violent than at first. The crowd has in- 
creased and I hope to put across in even the 
smallest figure that feeling of doggedly going 
ahead that crowds have when at work." 

An interview by Attilio Teglio dated 
March 1911 and published in the Modena jour- 



95 



nal i7 Panaro indicates that the painting had 
recently been finished. Teglie wrote that he 
saw "a grandiose, entirely spiritual composi- 
tion" in Boccioni's studio "which no one 
knows as yet." He continued: "It is a picture 
of extremely vast dimensions that I cannot 
— because I do not know how to — describe: 
There are horses launched at mad speed, and 
men bent with effort, and movement and life 
and labor; a whirlwind of colors that gives 
the impression of noise and elements of ali 
sorts that speak of the tumult of the city and, 
even more, of a man's thought." 

On Aprii 30, 1911, the Arte Libera exhi- 
bition opened in Milan, and the new painting 
was commented on in a number of reviews. 
The writer for the daily // Secolo admired its 
originality: "Boccioni makes his mark again 
with more solid audacities in drawing and 
color. He has a dynamic style in tune with fète 
or féerie. Whether he shows us The Roundup 
... or The Laugh ... or Labor with the city ris- 
ing and the convulsive anxiety of the horses 
dragging loads and the trams that pass in a 
distant contour line and the workers sweat- 
ing at their jobs or immersed in a blue cloud 
of dust, he always succeeds in giving us an 
extremely personal vision of art." 

The article that must have cut the artist 
to the quick was doubtless the one by his friend 
Barbantini, who wrote in L'Avvenire d'Italia 
(May 19, 1911): "Among the recent works, 
an extremely large allegory of labor does not 
really prove convincing. It is neither very in- 
triguing nor very eloquent, because the broad 
conception, which is carried out uncertainly 
and in an inadequate form, lacks clarity and 
organic cohesion. Perhaps the work was not 
sufficiently prepared and needed to be worked 
out in advance at greater depth and length, 
but even after examining its preparatory stud- 
ies I am induced to believe that by and large it 
is not in accord with Boccioni's character to 
persist in symbolic painting." 

The artist was quick to retort in a letter 
to Barbantini: "I could and would like to dis- 
cuss with you at length what you say about 
persisting in symbolic painting. Am I right in 



thinking that you are not absolutely question- 
ing my sincerity in producing a work which 
in one form or another I meditated over for 
four years? Granted that point, I would say to 
you that the only defect in the picture Labor is 
a slight insistence on realistic details in a work 
which is entirely a mental vision that grew 
out of reality. Therefore it is not my symbolic 
tendency that should be condemned but the 
particular work which may have failed. 

"Yet here again, however, I do not hesi- 
tate to say that a picture of such dimensions, 
inspired by such a pure purpose as that of erect- 
ing a new aitar to modem life vibrant with 
dynamism, one no less pure and exalting than 
those raised out of religious contemplation of 
the divine mystery — a picture that attempts 
this is infinitely superior to any sort of more 
or less objective reproduction of real life. 

"One can always draw one's own con- 
clusions with a certain skepticism about ali 
the mental constructions of the philosophers, 
but be that as it may, when I think of a man 
who, selecting and proceeding from certain 
prime elements or premises which are his own 
inner light, his own intuition, and who on 
that basis, with a pride verging on madness, 
with an iron-firm law that is simply terrify- 
ing, attempts to construct a system, a world, 
whatever the end result may be of such a work 
fatally destined to be beaten down to naught 
in the course of time — I admire him! I admire 
him always and even if the whole lot of it 
leads only to the man's breaking his own neck! 
One needs to forgive an occasionai error and 
occasionai unsureness in a man who is trying 
to fly! 

"I have said this because your article has 
stirred up again certain by now almost pla- 
cated objections to my realism symbolism ob- 
jectivism subjectivism and similar isms that 
mean nothing whatsoever when one needs to 
work, to liberate oneself from an idea by cre- 
ating it." 

In 1912 The City Rises was shown through- 
out Europe in the exhibitions organized to in- 
troduce the Futuristi new art. A review of 
the Paris showing, published in Gii Blas (Feb- 



96 



ruary 7, 1912) and signed Georges- Michel, 
struck a skeptical and ironie note. The author 
reports on his conversation with Severini 
who escorted him on his visit to the exhibi- 
tion and tried to make him understand the 
paintings; his comment is flippant and sarcas- 
tici "And here we have an interesting picture. 
Oh Cubists, insignificant pompiersl Cézanne, 
old fogey! Van Gogh or Van Dongen, shame- 
ful stick-in-the-muds! Monet, Renoir, Manet, 
phantoms of the past . . . Vanish! Even your 
fiery spirit, Oh De Groux, is melancholy com- 
pared with this horse red as hell itself which 
is dragged along by human serpents togged 
out as ditchdiggers and which, in a puff, make 
palaces rise tali." 

After the showing at the Sackville Gal- 
lery in London in March 1912, the exhibition 
moved to Berlin. On Aprii 13, the day after 
the opening in Berlin, Boccioni wrote to 
Barbantini: "The great pianist Busoni, who 
has been living in Berlin for many years, 
bought in London my picture La ville monte 
which I called in Italian II lavoro. He paid 4,000 
lire, of which 3,000 net carne to me." Even 
after the canvas was sold, it continued to make 
the rounds of the European exhibitions and is 
listed in the catalogues from Berlin ("Besitzer: 
Professor Ferruccio Busoni") and Brussels 
("Vendu au Maestro F. Busoni"). It was shown 
in the latter city from May 20 to June 1 in the 
Galerie Georges Giroux. In a letter to Herwarth 
Walden, director of Der Sturm, a Berlin gal- 
lery, Boccioni asked to have the picture pho- 
tographed: "We forgot to have my picture La 
ville monte photographed while I was in Ber- 
lin. You know that I am making an album of 
photographs of ali of my works. I absolutely 
need this. You must do me the favor of hav- 
ing it photographed right away at my expense. 
The size of the photograph should be 24 X 18 
centimeters. I beg you, do not make them smaller. " 

Boccioni's letters as well as others' testi- 
mony show how thoroughly he worked out 



his theories before beginning the painting. In 
a diary entry of March 14, 1907, he wrote: 
"With what is this to be done? With color? 
Or with drawing? With painting? With real- 
istic tendencies that no longer satisfy me, with 
symbolist tendencies that please me in few art- 
ista and that I have never attempted? With an 
idealism that attraets me and that I do not know 
how to put into concrete form?" 

For ali Boccioni's revolutionary propos- 
als and his deep-seated desire to move beyond 
Symbolism, The City Rises is nonetheless 
deeply immersed in that approach. A violent 
painting, it is whipped into an unbridled dy- 
namic motion by the red horse in the fore- 
ground. The gigantic steed, whose collar 
metamorphoses into a blue propeller biade 
slashing the air, throws the entire space into 
turmoil in its swift and irresistible onrush. Set 
before us is nothing less than a glorification 
of animai force while at the same time the 
man-made industriai city rises up in the back- 
ground in frenetic acceleration. 



exhibitions: Milan 1911; Paris, 1912, no. 6 (La ville 
monte); London 1912, no. 6 (The Rising City); Berlin 
1912, no. 6 (Die erwachende Stadt); Brussels 1912, 
no. 6 (La ville monte); Milan 1916-17, no. 70 (La città 
sale); Milan 1933; Paris 1935, p. 92, no. 3; Winterthur 
1959, no. 9; New York 1961, no. 30; Newcastle upon 
Tyne 1972, no. 2, p. 9; Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 8, 
p. 17; Venice 1986, p. 119 

literature: Teglio 1911; Secolo 1911; Barbantini 
1911; Soffici 1911; Georges-Michel 1912; Boccioni 1914, 
p. 458, no. 6; Ambrosiano 1924; Buzzi 1924; Carrieri 
1950, pi. 19, pp. 19, 45; Sironi and Zervos 1950, 
p.12; Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 15, p. 34; Calvesi 
1958a, pp. 154-55; Calvesi 1958b, p. 414; Calvesi 
1959, p. 24; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 216 (signed 
lower left; damaged 1960 in a fire at the Museum of 
Modem Art, New York); Rosenblum 1962, no. 124, 
pp. 180-81; De Grada 1962, p. 83; Ballo 1964, 
no. 346, pp. 194-222; Ragghianti 1965, no. 3, p. 16; 
Calvesi 1967, pp. 68-72, pp. 104-5; Martin 1968, 
no. 52; Bruno 1969, no. 119a; Kozloff 1973, no. 56; 
Tisdall and Bozzolla 1977, no. 25; Del Guercio 1980, 
p. 28; Tallarico 1982, p. 62; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 675; Crispolti 1986, p. 4 



97 



51 . Studies for "The City Rises" 

A. Giants and Pygmies 
Giganti e pigmei 1910 

Pendi on paper 
12 1 / 4 x25 1 /4in. (31X64 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 
Museo Civico di Torino — Galleria d'Arte Moderna 
(Gift of Benedetto Fiore), Turin 

B. Study for "The City Rises" (recto) 
Studio per La città sale 1910 

c. Unidentifiable subject (horse in motion) (verso) 

Pencil on paper 

3 7 / 8 x6in. (9.8 x 15.2 cm.) 

Signed bottoni right (recto): UB 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

D. Three Horses Tended by Men; Stone Pavement (recto) 
Cavalli sul selciato 1910 

E. Horses and Figures in a Landscape (verso) 
Cavalli e figure 1910 

Ink on paper 

4 t / 2 x6 1 /4Ìn. (11.4xl5.9cm.) 
Signed bottoni right (verso); Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

f. Man Leading a Horse (recto) 

Uomo con cavallo 1910 
G. Study of a Man (verso) 

Studio d'uomo 1910 

Recto: pencil on paper 

Verso: pencil and crayon on paper 

4V4x7in. (11.4xl7.8cm.) 

Signed bottoni right (recto): Boccioni 

Signed bottoni left (verso): UB 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

h. Study for "The City Rises" 
Studio per La città sale 1910 

Pencil on paper 

5V2X8V4H1. (14X21 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



98 



Studyfor "The City Rises" 
Studio per La città sale 1910 



Tempera on wood 
6% x 12 in. (17.5X30.5 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: U. Boccioni 
Collection Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick 

Study for "The City Rises" 
Bozzetto per La città sale 1910 

Pencil on paper 

22 1 / 2 x33 1 /2in. (57.2x85.1 cm.) 
Signed and dated bottom right: 1910 U. Boccioni 
The Museum of Modem Art (Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund), 
New York 

Sheet of Studies including two composition sketchesfor "The 
City Rises" and two Joy a scene of an urban crowd (recto) 
Studi di folla 1910 

Group of fgures related to scene ofan urban crowd (verso) 
Gruppo di persone 1910 

Pencil on paper 

5V2X7V8Ìn. (14x18.1 cm.) 

Signed bottom right (recto): Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



This series of studies, sketches, and prepara- 
tory drawings shows how much Boccioni 
modified and perfected his composition of The 
City Rises. The first work — Giants and Pygmies 
— is constructed as a triptych with a tree in 
the left compartment to symbolize Nature (or 
Dawn as that compartment is labeled in an- 
other pen sketch). The centrai image — horses 
dragged along by workmen — wocrld be de- 
veloped further in the painting to represent 
Work (or, as in some pen sketches, Day). At 
the right is a huge telescope or some other sort 
of astronomical instrument that may stand for 
the technological advances of modem times 
or, more specifically, Night. 

The horse that is dragged along by human 
force was transformed through numerous 
experiments — either rapid jottings or metic- 
ulous sketches. It initially appeared in recog- 



nizable animai form, but it was subsequently 
enlarged and its appearance modified to make 
a monstrous vortex of energy. The sketch (no. 
51j) in the Museum of Modem Art, New York, 
offers a complete version of the composition 
rendered in chiaroscuro as if to simulate the 
vibrations of color in the definitive canvas. 
However, since that drawing lacks the horse 
with the blue bladelike projection (between 
the huge steed in the foreground and the build- 
ing under construction at the right), it may 
have been created after the canvas rather than 
before. 

In various oil studies Boccioni experi- 
mented with shifting the waves of color to dif- 
ferent tonalities, ranging from pure colors to 
less brilliant tints. In ali those studies the vi- 
brations are rendered by slanting brushstrokes 
of variable length and thickness which are 



99 



5lA 





51j 



directly involved in the motion and, indeed, 
serve to emphasize the dynamic propulsion 
which is so centrai a feature of the work. 

exhibitions: No. 51a— Milan 1982-83, no. 54 
Nos. 51b, c— Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 23 
No. 51h— New York 1973-74, no. 188 

Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 22; New Haven 1983, 

no. 24, p. 42 

No. 51 1 — Newcasrie upon Tyne 1972, p. 12; 

Venice, 1986, p. 118(1910-11) 

No. 51j — New York 1949; New York 1961, 

no. 27; Paris 1973, no. 11 

Nos. 51k, l— Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 24 

literature: No. 51a — Ballo 1964, no. 335, p. 223; 
Bruno 1969, no. 117a; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 672 

No. 51b, c— Taylor 1961a, p. 35 (ili.); Taylor 1961b, 
no. 161; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 222 (Scena 
di cavalli); Ballo 1964, no. 334; Bruno 1969, no. 119d; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 677 

No. 5 1d— Taylor 1.961 b, no. 158; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 198; De Grada 1962, no. 55 (Tre 
cavalli e uomini sul selciato); Ballo 1964, no. 347; Bruno 
1969 (in the margin at no. 116); Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 668 



No. 51e— Taylor 1961b, no. 158a; Ballo 1964, 
no. 321; Bruno 1969 (in the margm at no. 116); Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 667 

No. 5lF— Taylor 1961b, no. 159; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 201; Ballo 1964, no. 330; Bruno 
1969 (in the margin at no. 116); Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 669 

No. 51g— Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 670 

No. 51h— Taylor 1961a, p. 35 (ili); Taylor 1961b, 
no. 162; Ballo 1964, no. 324; Bruno 1969, no. 119b; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 676 

No. 51i— Calvesi 1958b, p. 414; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 221; Ballo 1964, no. 342; Bruno 
1969, no. 119g; Perocco 1972, p. 117; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 680 

No. 51j— Costantini 1933, p. 130; Taylor 1961b, 
no. 164; De Grada 196, no. 60; Ballo 1964, no. 345; 
Bruno 1969, no. 119j; Calvesi 1973, no. 21; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 684 

No. 51k— Taylor 1961b, no. 163; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 230; Ballo 1964, no. 312; Bruno 
1969, no. 115c (recto of no. 115b); Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 720 

No. 51l— Taylor 1961b, no. 163a; Ballo 1964, 
no. 313; Bruno 1969, no. 115b; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 721 



Study for "The Riot 7 ' 
Studio per Baruffa 1910 

Pendi on paper 

óVsXóVsin. (15.6xl5.6cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



Although its general pian resembles that of 
Riot in the Galleria (no. 49), this study is the 
preparatory drawing for another painting of 
1910, The Riot (La Baruffa), formerly in the 
H. N. Rothschild collection and now in the 
Museum of Modem Art, New York. That 
canvas itself closely follows the compositional 
scheme of another painting, The Roundup, ali 
trace of which has been lost since 1913 when 
it was shown in Rotterdam as the property of 
Monsieur Lépine, prefect of police of Paris, 
who had acquired it through the Galene 
Bernheim-Jeune. 

In The Riot ali naturalism is discarded in 
favor of Expressionist linear abstraction. The 
composition is resolved into a schematization 
of lines, and the brushwork and color are more 



vigorous and vibrant than in Riot in the Galleria. 

The sketch for The Riot is less abstracted 
and terse than the painting, and the realistic 
details of the image can stili be made out. The 
drawing has two large streetlights in the cen- 
ter; in the painting these are absorbed into a 
single light source in the upper center which 
is so brilliant as to overwhelm the lesser glow 
of the other two lamps. In the painting the 
mass of people is a formless and undefined 
tangle, whereas here one can stili perceive in- 
dividuai figures. 

exhibitions: New York 1973-74, no. 199; New 
Haven 1983, no. 21, p. 33 

literature: Taylor 1961b, no. 178; De Grada 1962, 
no. 62 (1911); Ballo 1964, no. 373 (1911); Bruno 1969, 
no. 124f; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 687 



104 




105 




106 



The Laugh 
La risata 1911 

Oil on canvas 

43 3 / 8 x57 1 /8Ìn. (110.2 x 145.4 on.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
The Museum of Modem Art (Gift of Herbert 
andNannette Rothschild, 1959), New York 

The Laugh is one of the first of Boccioni's 
works that can be called Futurist. It dates from 
the period of full artistic maturity in which 
Boccioni finally parted company with Divi- 
sionism and formulated a new Futurist poetic 
rooted in the study of sensations derived from 
observation of modem life. 

When the picture was shown in the spring 
of 191 1 at the Arte Libera exhibition in Milan, 
critics commented favorably or, more often, 
unfavorably on the artist's "audacity": "The 
person who painted Three Women and Twilight 
should not let himself fall into the nastinesses 
of Mourning and Laugh" (Corriere della Sera); 
"Umberto Boccioni affirms himself anew with 
more solid audacities of drawing and color [in] 
The Laugh, with its unabashedly bold and im- 
petuous colors that fuse in a strident orches- 
tra of harmonies" (i7 Secolo). 

The painting was defaced by a visitor to 
the exhibition, an episode that has given rise 
to a number of hypotheses about the ways in 
which it was damaged and in which it was re- 
paired or repainted. Among Boccioni's papers 
is what seems to be a draft of a telegram to 
be sent to the "Poeta Marinetti Teatro Fenice 
Venezia," which reads: "Unknown cowards 
have defaced picture The Laugh by Umberto 
Boccioni — Numerous artists also adversaries 
highly indignant — Walls in our hall getting 
covered with insults — Undaunted we are con- 
tinuing battle sending you wishes of victory 
for yours — Speak about it in lecture — Carrà 
Russolo Datta Cavacchioli Buzzi Cinti." 

The laconic note does not specify either 
how the canvas was ruined or the extent of 
the damage. Some information however can 
be gleaned from an article about the exhibi- 
tion published in the newspaper La Perseveranza 
on May 7, 1911, which reported that a visi- 



tor, commenting ironically on the artistic free- 
dom propagandized by the exhibitors, ran his 
finger over the still-fresh paint: "We are in the 
Futuristi hall, at the Arte Libera exhibition, 
in the former headquarters of the Ricordi 
Company. Two citizens are admiring a pic- 
ture with violent splashes of bright red. 

" The art of painting could not be more 
free than this.' 

" ' Oh no, it could be even more so . . . like 
this.' And a finger stretches out to the red 
splashes, stili fresh, and then streaks over the 
canvas making squiggles and arabesques. 
'There you are,' he observes, 'the picture is 
more complete now, or at least it is more pleas- 
ing to my own artistic freedom.' 

"And, modest in such great glory, he goes 
on his way not even asking compensation from 
the painter for whom he has finished up the 
violent contras ts of the Futurist canvas. It is 
said that F. T. Marinetti is looking for the 
unknown disciple in order to dedicate a book 
to him. And looking for him too is the 're- 
touched' painter Boccioni, in order to put into 
practice that part of the Futurist doctrine that 
has to do with the fist and the slap in the face. " 

This article would seem to show that the 
canvas was not slashed with a razor biade as 
stated by Ballo (1964) but was merely dam- 
aged superficially in the lower part (since the 
article mentions the color red) where the paint 
was not entirely dry. It can therefore be de- 
duced that the picture was finished just be- 
fore it was put on exhibit. From Boccioni's 
letters to Nino Barbantini in the summer and 
winter of 1910, and from an intervie w with 
the artist in March 1911, it would appear that 
he worked on other canvases when he was 
painting The City Rises, but it seems improb- 
able that The Laugh was finished before the 
spring of 1911, a hypothesis proposed by 
Calvesi in 1958. 

Some authorities affirm that the picture 
was completely repainted in the fall of 1911, 
several months after being damaged, in a 
"Cubist" manner that gave it a rather more 
modem look before it was put on view again, 
in its present form, in the Futurist exhibition 
at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. 



107 



Ragghianti (1962) proposed a reconstruo 
tion of the originai on the basis of the prepa- 
ratory sketches. He uses as his authority the 
statement Marinetti made in his lecture at the 
Teatro Fenice in Venice on May 7, after re- 
ceiving the telegram mentioned above. "Leav- 
ing aside the additions laid over it, " Ragghianti 
writes, "the originai scene included three very 
vulgar cocottes or 'kept women.' One is stili 
almost fully visible at the left, flinging herself 
backward in laughter, with hands bejeweled 
with serpents clasped across her breasts. One, 
seen from the back in the center foreground, 
has a bright red wide-sleeved dress and flame- 
like hair (she once wore a startling round 
plumed hat); she raises her forearms to either 
side and gesticulates as if pronouncing the bon 
mot cochon at the end of the dinner. And fmally 
there is one, a part of whose profile remains 
at the right, who is laughing and putting a 
cigarette to her mouth 'red as a wound.' With 
them, three men . . . in jackets and white waist- 
coats: One at the left, sprawling on . . . his chair, 
looks like the famous American banker Mor- 
gan (and whose head was echoed by one in 
front of him); another at the right, his elbow 
on the table, lights a cigarette from the flame 
of a match; and the third at the top, mustached 
like the first, leans toward the laughing wom- 
an. To judge by the Thonet chairs and the elab- 
orately set table, the little supper en séparé was 
not out-of-doors, and it is certainly illumi- 
nated by electriclight. . . . The reworking pre- 
served the preceding pian on the whole: 
However it was stabbed (to put it Futuristi- 
cally) by an increasing series of diagonal 
wedges . . . from the right upward, whereas the 
originai composition was oriented from the 
right downward. These wedges are given con- 
crete form in small café tables that . . . trans- 
form the setting by [presenting a] multiplicity 
of figures in profile, front view, rear view, 
men young and old and women with huge 
feathered hats. ... In place of the large round 
plumed hat of the woman in the center fore- 
ground — which was the most novel and au- 
dacious feature of the first version and was 
thus the pivotal shape around which the en- 
tire figurative composition was distributed, 



echoed by the violet-red hat of the laughing 
woman opposite — Boccioni introduced one of 
those lanterns of relatively enormous size 
whose globe, metallic with luminous perfora- 
tions, became the most prominent element, 
the one with immediate impact on the viewer. 
[This] superimposition did not really alter the 
structure of the originai composition, [since 
the artist] maintained the relation of oblique 
and continuous projection between the sphere 
and the laughing woman's figure inscribed 
within the semicircle. Final insertions: the 
plates beneath the concave hands . . . , the bril- 
liantly shining stili life fitted onto the top of 
the lamp, glasses in profile and cross-section, 
the siphon bottle brilliant and decomposed 
within the cone of light. The painterly treat- 
ment . . . is marked by a fleet and supple use 
of color in the Secessionist manner; there are 
Divisionist and Pointillist traits in the parts of 
the originai version that remained almost in- 
tact (i.e., the figure of the laughing woman, 
the red silk dress with ali its frills and fur- 
belows . . . , and some more realistic parts of 
the men's heads and clothing). In the later 
additions [the treatment] becomes heavier and 
also tends to break up in impastos of more 
vehement Divisionism to bituminous agglom- 
erations, from greenish chiaroscuros to dense 
masses disturbed by emphatic drawing; the 
discrepancy [between the repainting and the 
originai] becomes noticeable, even pronounced, 
and increases the impression of dispersion that 
has been created in the now-overburdened pie- 
ture despite a very complex maneuver to tie it 
together and recompose it. The redundancy 
and intersection of the numerous directional 
lines . . . increases the impression of extreme 
fragmentation; in comparison, in terms of the 
swiftness and impetus of the overall image 
the first Laugh was certainly more concise and 
instantaneous in impact even if, objectively, 
poorer, more superficial." 

As early as 1958 Calvesi hypothesized 
with caution that the canvas may have been 
entirely redone because of the presence of 
Cubist-type solutions, particularly in the back- 
ground (nine years later however he was in- 
clined to reject this idea). 



108 



Taylor (1961) also postulateci that the 
work was painted from scratch on a new can- 
vas: "Doubtless these rolling, boisterous forms 
were much more in evidence in the painting 
when it was first shown than in its present 
form. Marinetti mentioned later in the year 
that the painting had been slashed by some 
unconvinced visitors to the Milan exhibition. 
Evidently Boccioni recreated the work on new 
canvas, taking the opportunity to add the an- 
gular forms and 'cubist' bottles and glasses 
that have no place in the originai sketches nor 
in carrying out his stated expressive theory. 
Probably the revised version was made late in 
1911 after his return from a hasty viewing in 
Paris of the recent works of Picasso and Braque 
and his friend Severini." 

This hypothesis was championed by Ballo 
in 1964: "The picture as seen today. . . was 
undoubtedly repainted after the defacement 
at the exhibition by a razor biade wielded by 
an unknown visitor. On his return from Paris 
in the fall, Boccioni took it in hand again to 
rework it with the Cubist method. Severini 
— in front of The Laugh and the States of Mind 
in the show of Italian works in American col- 
lections (June 1960, Palazzo Reale, Milan) — 
assured me that Boccioni, after his trip to Paris 
in the fall of 1911, had redone in a Cubist key 
various works intended for the exhibition at 
Bernheim-Jeune's. " 

One of the more interesting reviews of 
the initial showing at the Arte Libera exhibi- 
tion in Milan was that of Nino Barbantini in 
L'Avvenire d'Italia, especially in view of the 
friendship between artist and critici "One of 
these pictures {The Laugh) depicts a group of 
light women and viveurs in very lively con- 
versation around a café table while one of the 
women, ali of whom are dressed bizarrely, 
breaks out into uproarious laughter which is 
taken up by the others. The scene is viewed 
with acute penetration and represented in 
painting of irresistible effectivenessiThe effect 
is in large part due to the violence of the col- 
oring, to the dazzling juxtaposition of ex- 
tremely strong and luminous tones. In the 
center of the group an enormous yellow feather 
seems a veritable spray of fire works." 



Barbantini's description can be taken as 
conclusive evidence that the general organi- 
zation of the work was not changed nor was 
the coloring made more brilliant and aggres- 
sive. It can be supposed, nevertheless, that 
Boccioni returned to the finished canvas and 
superimposed on the originai surface a num- 
ber of lines and objects — for example, repeat- 
ing the table or adding the glasses — with 
further additions that do not so much recali 
the Cubist manner as represent his own first 
approach to the problem of compenetration 
of subject and setting. 

Although Barbantini criticized Boccioni's 
other picture in this exhibition, The City Rises 
(no. 50), for its lack of clarity and organic 
cohesion as well as too overtly symbolistic ref- 
erences, he admired The Laugh, especially for 
its use of color. Thus already in its first show- 
ing and presumed first version the colors 
played the key part in constructing the image. 
It is nonetheless likely that after his return from 
Paris in November 1911 the artist did retouch 
the painting and add elements to intermix the 
planes and to fuse — and confuse — the perspec- 
tive and contours. 

When The Laugh was shown in London 
in March 1912 Boccioni himself supplied a de- 
scription for the catalogue which, as trans- 
lated for that purpose, read: "The scene is 
round the table of a restaurant where ali are 
gay. The personages are studied from ali sides 
and both the objects in front and those at the 
back are to be seen, ali these being present in 
the painter's memory, so that the principle of 
the Roentgen rays is applied to the picture." 

As Martin (1968) suggests, the prepon- 
derant influence on this type of synthetic vi- 
sion would seem to be the theories of Henri 
Bergson rather than the Cubists' system, and 
indeed one cannot help suspecting that Boc- 
cioni was indulging in a subtle criticism of 
Cubism in this canvas, especially as regards 
the volumetrie decomposition of forms. 

The picture was not shown in the Futur- 
ist exhibition in Rotterdam in the summer of 
1913, having been sold in the spring of 1912 
when it was exhibited at the Galerie Der Sturm 
in Berlin. It, along with some twenty other 



109 



Futurist works, was acquired by Wolfgang 
Borchardt, the German collector, whom 
Boccioni described in a letter (May 29, 1912) 
to Luigi Russolo as "a rich man but a little 
spendthrift; so he can very well pay up but 
can also run into debt. This gentleman always 
invites us to the most sumptuous meals in the 
most aristocratic club in Berlin." 

The picture reappeared in 1931 when a 
Mr. W. A. Sinclair wrote from Kassel, Ger- 
many, to Benito Mussolini (July 30, 1931; 
ACS, Presidenza Consiglio dei Ministri 1931- 
33, fase. 2207) to propose that the Italian gov- 
ernment purchase it from him: "I have the te- 
merity to write to you about the picture 
Laughter, the masterpiece of the father of Fu- 
turism Umberto Boccioni. It is difficult to 
exaggerate either the powerful beauty of this 
picture or its importance in the history of art, 
but circumstances compel me to dispose of 
my collection — at present on loan in the state 
gallery here — and I should be glad to know if 
you or any of the Italian galleries would con- 
sider purchasing it. Quite apart from my own 
necessity I feel this great work should find a 



resting place in Italy." The laconic reply was 
dated August 28, 1931: "This ministry regrets 
being unable to take the offer of Mr. W. A. 
Sinclair under consideration because the funds 
allocated in the budget do not offer the possi- 
bility of the proposed acquisition." 

exhibitions: Milan 1911; Paris 1912, no. 5, p. 26 
(ili.: Le rire); London 1912, no. 5, p. 7 (ili. Laughter); 
Berlin 1912, no. 5, p. 7 (ili.); Brussels 1912, no. 5, 
p. 26 (ili.); Leipzig 1914 (cover illustration); Berlin 1917, 
no. 8 {Das Lachen); New York 1961, no. 33, p. 40; 
Milan 1973-74, no. 109; Paris 1980; Philadelphia 
1980-81, p. 29; Milan 1982-83, no. 66; Venice 1986, 
p. 121 

literature: Barbantini 1911; Corriere della Sera 
1911; Perseveranza 1911; Secolo 1911; Soffici 1911; 
Boccioni 1914, p. 458; Dinamo Futurista 1933a; 
Carrieri 1950, pi. 21, p. 50 (1910); Pastonchi 1950, 
p. 38 (1912); Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 26, pp. 26, 36; 
Calvesi 1958a, pp. 156-57, 169; Archivi del Futurismo 
1962, no. 248; De Grada 1962, fìg. 66, p. 85; Ragghianti 
1962, no. 364, pp. 154-57; Ballo 1964, no. 432, 
p. 228; Baumgarth 1964, no. 9, p. 181; Ragghianti 
1964, no. 24; Calvesi 1967, pp. 68, 104, 258; Martin 
1968, no. 59; Bruno 1969, no. 138a; Calvesi 1973 
(see nos. 22-25); Kozloff 1973, no. 81; Tisdall and 
Bozzolla 1977, no. 28, p. 41; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 701; Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 61, ili. 27 



54a. Study for "The Laugh" 

Studio per ha risata 1910-1911 

Pendi on paper 
414x6 in. (11.4X15.2 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 
The Museum of Modem Art (Gift of Herbert 
and Nannette Rothschild), New York 

B. Study for "The Laugh" (recto) 

Studio per La risata 1911 
c. Man with Mustache (verso) 

Studio 1911 

Pencil on paper 

4 3 /sX6in. (11.1 X 15.2 cm.) 

Signed bottoni right (recto): Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



Although the second sketch is more rapid and 
summary than the first, it is closer in compo- 
sition to the final painting. With figures dis- 
posed very much as in the finished work, this 
study is closest to the canvas itself and gives 
us the best idea of what The Laugh may have 
looked like before it was damaged and re- 
painted. On the verso of the Malbin sheet there 
is a drawing of a mustached man, which is a 
first sketch for one of the male figures enter- 
tained by the two women's chatter. 

literature: No. 54a — Taylor 1961b, no. 174; Ballo 
1964, no. 429; Bruno 1969, no. 138c; Calvesi and 
Coen, 1983, no. 699 

No. 54b— Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 700 



110 



54a 




54c 



55a. Modem Idol 

Idolo moderno 1911 

Oil on wood 

23^2X23 in. (59.7x58.4cm.) 
Signed bottoni left: U. Boccioni 
Collection Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick 

b. Studyfor "Modem IdoV 
Studio per Idolo moderno 1911 

Pencil on paper 

5 3 /4X5%in. (14.6x14.3 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

c. Head of a Young Woman wìth a Large Hat 
Testa di donna 191 1 

Pencil on paper 

4%x4in. (12.4 X 10.2 cm.) 

Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



"In order to conceive and comprehend the new 
beauties of a modem picture, the soul must 
become pure again, the eye must free itself of 
the veil cast over it by atavism and culture 
and consider the only controlling factor to be 
Nature, certainly not the Museum! 

"Then at last everyone will become aware 
that it is not brown that courses beneath our 
epidermis but instead that yellow glows there, 
red blazes there, green and azure and violet 
dance there, voluptuous and inviting! How can 
one stili view a human face as rosy pink when 
our new nocturnal life has given us, undeni- 
ably, a doublé life? The human face is yellow, 
is red, is green, is blue, is violet. The pallor 
of a woman eyeing a jeweler's showcase is 
more iridescent than ali the prisms of the jew- 
els that fascinate her. 

"The possibilities we sense in paint can- 
not be simply murmured. We are making them 
sing and shout in our canvases which blast 
out triumphal fanfares. 

"And that is why youreyes, so long ac- 



customed to dusky dimness, will be opened 
to the most brilliant visions of light." 

This excerpt from the Technical Manifesto 
of Futurist Painting dated Aprii 11, 1910, and 
signed by Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Balla, and 
Severini, expounds one aspect of the program 
and aims of the recently formed group. In Mod- 
em Idol it seems as if Boccioni took the joint 
proclamation literally (he may very well 
have been its chief author or at least formula- 
tor) and transformed it into a concrete image, 
"Light effects upon the face of Woman" was 
the succinct description, probably contributed 
by the artist himself, of this painting in the 
catalogue of the Futurist exhibition at the 
Sackville Gallery, London, in March 1912. 
Beams of light shoot across the face and trans- 
form it into a spectral mask that takes on the 
colors of the night: The features are transfig- 
ured, the flesh itself becomes transparent to 
the reflections and iridescences that frazion- 
ate into ali the colors of the spectrum. Yel- 
lows, reds, blues become violets, oranges, 



112 




113 




greens, in accord with the laws of comple- 
mentary colors and in accord also with the 
Divisionist technique Boccioni continued to 
cling to, even here where he was laying on 
his paint in a variety of touches and manners, 
trying the effect of different brushstrokes 
— shorter or longer, more sparing or thicker. 
As regards modes of feeling, however, it is 
the Expressionist approach that holds sway. 
The yellows and reds in the "idol's" hat radi- 
ate a luminous glow across and through the 
painting. Those colors are, in fact, the ful- 
crum of a picture fraught with mysterious 
force and cruel aggression. 



For Calvesi (1958) the picture is based on 
Expressionism in the Munch manner, with 
direct references to the work of Toulouse- 
Lautrec and Seurat. 

Although Ballo (1964) states that the can- 
vas was shown in 1911 at the Arte Libera ex- 
hibition in Milan, none of the reviews mention 
it and no copy of the catalogue has been found 
to confirm this. 

There are two quite different studies for 
the painting. One is more naturalistic, though 
the large hat is exactly as in the canvas. In the 
other the woman has staring, almost mad eyes, 
even more intense than the hallucinated gaze 



114 



55c 



of the woman in the painting. Long pendi 
strokes sweep across much of the face accen- 
tuating, in the same way as the shadow of the 
hat in the painting the areas plunged in dark- 
ness, with only the chin struck directly by the 
glaring light. 

exhibitions: No. 55a — Paris 1912, no. 8 (Idole 
moderne); London 1912, no. 8 (A Modem Idol); Berlin 
1912, no. 8 (Ein modernes Ideal); Brussels 1912, no. 8 
(Idole moderne); New York 1961, no. 32; Newcastle 
upon Tyne 1972, p. 13; Venice 1986, p. 120 

literature: No. 55a — Rotterdam 1913; Boccioni 
1914, p. 458, no. 8; Buzzi 1950, p. 28; Argan and 



Calvesi 1953, fig. 17, p. 34 on temporary loan from 
the collection N. Urech Walden); Calvesi 1958a, 
p. 156; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 217 (oil on 
board); De Grada 1962, pi. 12 (signed lower left 
"Boccioni 1911"); Ballo 1964, no. 383, p. 228 (ex- 
hibited at the Mostra d'Arte Libera, Milan); Calvesi 
1967, pp. 53, 72; Perocco 1972, p. 118; Tisdall and 
Bozzolla 1977, no. 23; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 709; Crispolti 1986, p. 10 

No. 55b— Taylor 1961b, no. 148; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 219; Ballo 1964, no. 382; Bruno 
1969, no. 130b; Birolli 1971, p. 10; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 710 

No. 55c— Taylor 1961b, no. 147; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 220; Ballo 1964, no. 384 (Testa 
di giovane donna con grande cappello); Bruno 1969, 
no. 130c; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 711 



115 



56. 



States of Mind 



A. States of Mind: The Farewells 
Gli addii — Stati d'animo II 191 1 

Oil on canvas 

27% X 37% in. (70.8x96.2 cm.) 

The Museum of Modem Art (Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979), 
New York 

b. States of Mind: Those Who Go 

Quelli che vanno — Stati d'animo II 1911 

Oil on canvas 

27 3 /4X37%in. (70.5 X 96.2 cm.) 

The Museum of Modem Art (Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979), 
New York 

c. States of Mind: Those Who Stay 

Quelli che restano — Stati d'animo II 191 1 

Oil on canvas 

27% x 37% in. (70.8 x 96.2 cm.) 

The Museum of Modem Art (Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979), 
New York 



d. Study for i( States of Mind: The Farewells" 
Studio per Gli addii — / 1911 

Pencil on paper 

19V 8 x24in. (48.5x61 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: UB 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

e. Study for u States of Mind: The Farewells n 
Studio per Gli addii — I 1911 

Charcoal and chalk on paper 
23X34 in. (58.4x86.4 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

The Museum of Modem Art (Gift of Vico Baer), New York 



116 



f. Drawing After "States of Mind: The Farewells" 
Disegno da Gli addii 1912 

Ink on paper 

14 ysxnVi in. (36.6 X 44.4 cm.) 
Collection Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick 

G. States of Mind: Those Who Go 

Quelli che vanno — Stati d'animo I 191 1 

Oil on canvas 
28x37 3 / 4 in. (71X96 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: U. Boccioni 1911 

Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo Reale, Milan 

H. Studyfor u States of Mind: Those Who Go" 
Studio per Quelli che vanno 1911 

Charcoal and chalk on paper 
23X34 in. (58.4 x 86.4 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

The Museum of Modem Art (Gift of Vico Baer), New York 

i. Drawing After u States of Mind: Those Who Go" 
Disegno da Quelli che vanno 1912 

Ink on paper 

12 1 /2Xl6 3 / 4 in. (31.8x42.5 cm.) 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

j. Sketch for " States of Mind: Those Who Go" 
Bozzetto per Quelli che vanno 1911 

Oil on canvas 

37 3 /4X47y2Ìn. (96x 120.5 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 

Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo Reale, Milan 

k. Study for u States of Mind: Those Who Stay" 
Studio per Quelli che restano 1911 

Charcoal and chalk on paper 
23x34 in. (58.4 x 86.4 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

The Museum of Modem Art (Gift of Vico Baer), New York 



The earliest source of information about the 
States of Mind trilogy is an article Guillaume 
Apollinare published in the Mentire de France 
on November 16, 1911, in which he reported 
on a recent encounter with Boccioni and 
Severini. Boccioni was in Paris at the time to 
arrange for an exhibition scheduled to take 
place in autumn but which had to be post- 
poned to the following spring because 
Marinetti, the ringleader and stellar attraction, 
was at the Libyan front as a war correspon- 
dent. As Apollinaire told it, Boccioni said, "I 
have painted two pictures, one of which ex- 
presses departure and the other arrivai. This 
takes place in a railroad station. Eh bienl to 
bring out the difference in feelings I have not 
put into my picture of arrivai a single line 
found in the picture of departure." 

These pictures, however, do not seem to 
correspond to the well-known versions of the 
States of Mind in the Museum of Modem Art, 
New York, but to an earlier one stili strongly 
marked by an Expressionist approach (Civico 
Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan). 

After visiting Paris, Boccioni very likely 
took up again his idea of expressing feelings 
and sentiments in a work of art; this possibil- 
ity was very much on his mind for some 
months, since he had begun work on the large 
canvas of The City Rises (no. 50). On his re- 
turn he redid the States of Mind in a new ver- 
sion that was more modem, more "French." 
As Calvesi (1958)rightly pointed out, Boccioni 
must have rethought his conception of these 
works after he and the other Futurists were 
the target of a direct attack by Ardengo Soffici 
who was championing the Cubists in his re- 
view La Voce and, with such a partisan of 
French painting as Roger Allard for a mouth- 
piece, indirectly criticizing the Italians. Obvi- 
ously Boccioni was therefore not entirely 
unacquainted with Cubism even before his 
visit to Paris, and he himself would imply as 
much in his Pittura, scultura futuriste of 1914: 
"We know Cubism in the form in which it 
was held up as our contrary in France in arti- 
cles and books after we appeared with the Tech- 
nical Manifesto of Futurist Painting (Aprii 11, 1910) 



and our first exhibition at the Galene Bernheim 
(February 6, 1912)." 

In the same book Boccioni stated that he 
was already at work on the trilogy at the time 
of his lecture of May 29, 1911, at the Circolo 
Artistico in Rome: "Those three paintings that 
were exhibited throughout Europe already 
have a literature around them. Given the pe- 
riod in which they were conceived they stili 
show some uncertainties, but they did define 
the nature of the vastness and infinite possi- 
bility of Futurist painting and sculpture. Ali 
those who have followed the way pointed to 
in these three works have liberated themselves 
from Cubist academic frigidity and, although 
persisting in the concept of pure painting, 
have been able to elevate it to the lyrical 
comprehension of the universal dynamism. 
Here is what I said in a stormy session in the 
face of almost general incredulity: 'If Watts 
said that he painted ideas, which simply carne 
down to applying traditional forms and col- 
ors to purely literary and philosophical visions, 
we reply that we, relying on our state of mind, 
paint the sensation because we wish to remain, 
consistently, exclusively within the field of 
painting. In point of fact, in painting the pure 
sensation we pin down the plastic idea before 
it becomes localized in a particular direction 
and takes definitive form by one or another 
sensory repercussion (music, poetry, painting). 
We go ali the way back to the first universal 
sensation that our spirit can already perceive 
thanks to the extremely intense synthesis of 
ali the senses in a universal whole which will 
make us return, through and beyond our mil- 
lennial complexity, to primordial simplicity. 
This means that we desire the subject to be- 
come one with the object.'" (The version 
quoted in the book, reproduced here, differs 
in some details from the text of the lecture; 
see p. 231.) 

Another passage from that lecture further 
expounds the artist's thinking on this theme: 
"And so if solid bodies give rise to states of 
mind by means of vibrations of forms, then 
we will draw these vibrations. Velocity will 
thus be something more than an object in swift 



118 




119 



motion, and we will perceive it as such: We 
will draw and paint velocity by rendering the 
abstract lines that the object in its course has 
aroused in us. Every verification with the out- 
side world must end up in the created work. 
The colors should not correspond with the 
objects because these latter are never them- 
selves colored; this higher realism has gener- 
ated this truth: If objects appear colored more 
or less according to the emotion that invests 
them, why not paint the sensation these varia- 
tions arouse? The same can be said of forms: 
If an object never has a fixed Form but varies 
according to the emotion of whoever con- 
templates it, why should we not draw, instead 
of the object, the rhythm aroused in us by 
that variation in dimensions?" 

From Apollinaire's remarks as well as 
from the lecture in Rome, it is obvious that 
by 1911 Boccioni was perfectly clear about the 
ideas he was preparing to delve into more 
deeply. The changes in his canvases which he 
probably made after returning from Paris 
would therefore have affected the form but 
not the basic ideology. 

When the "triptych" was shown for the 
first time in February 1912 at the Galerie 
Bernheim-Jeune, it was considered no more 
than an offshoot of Cubist art. The critic 
Vauxcelles wrote that " The Specters [Les larves] 
by M. Boccioni is a plain and simple mark- 
down from Braque and Picasso." Apollinaire 
could not resist making sweepingly summary 
judgments: "Boccioni is above ali under the 
influence of Picasso who dominates ali new 
painting today, not only in Paris but through- 
out the world. . . . The exhibition of the Fu- 
turist painters will teach our young painters 
to be even bolder than they have been so far. 
Without such boldness the Futurists would 
never have dared exhibit their stili very im- 
perfect efforts. It will be useful to them also 
in measuring just how far they surpass their 
rivals in Italy and in ali other nations." 

For his part Boccioni seems to have 
brushed aside such comments in the press. 
From Paris, on February 12, he even wrote a 
letter of decidedly triumphant tone to his 



friend Barbantini: "The entire battle took its 
character from my States of Mind which are 
being talked about in ali the artistic and liter- 
ary centers in Paris. The French are dumb- 
founded that in a little provincial city like Milan 
something could be said that leaves them 
speechless, they being so accustomed to ali 
the most absurd efforts at originality. . . . Not 
even I believed that my works would create 
such an uproar. . . . You know that I have ten 
and seven of them would likely get ripped 
apart in an Italian exhibition, but these three 
'states of mind' have sufficed to point out a 
new path. 

"It is certain that in ali the analytical and 
accidental explorations by the Impressionists 
into light, by Cézanne into color, by Matisse 
and Picasso into form (and after the latter, the 
Cubists), one senses an absolute need to get 
out of those and to move on from the con- 
structive elements lighted upon in these re- 
cent times to definitive construction! 

"This synthesis — given the ever more ac- 
centuated tendency of the human spirit to 
render the concrete by means of the abstract 
— cannot be expressed except by means of spir- 
itualized objective elements. 

"Such spiritualization will be rendered 
by pure mathematical values, by pure geo- 
metrie dimensions. . . . 

"What will be the subjects that this higher 
objectivity will have to deal with? If the objects 
become mathematical values, the ambience in 
which they will exist will be a rhythm spe- 
cific to the emotion surrounding them. 

"The graphic translation of this rhythm 
will be a state of forni, a state of color, each of 
which will give back to the viewer the 'state 
of mind' that produced it. 

"While at first sight this seems (accord- 
ing to some) either philosophy or literature 
or mathematics, according to me it is pure 
paintingl" 

Boccioni persisted in expounding his the- 
ories over and over again, as if consumed by 
an inner fever that prevented him from think- 
ing of anything else. The direct encounter with 
Cubism merely reinforced his convictions. He 



120 



now laid greater emphasis ori the essential 
difference between the volumetrie construc- 
tion the French practiced and the spiritualized 
construction of his own works, a point he 
insisted on in the prefaces to the Paris and Lon- 
don exhibition catalogues. In his own co in- 
ni entary, as rendered into English in the 
London catalogue, he gave his personal inter- 
pretation of what the States of Mind signify: 

"1. leave-taking. In the midst of the con- 
fusion of departure, the mingled concrete and 
abstract sensations are translated into force-lines 
and rhythms in quasi-musical harmony: Mark 
the undulating lines and the chords made up 
of the combination of figures and objects. The 
prominent elements, such as the number of 
the engine, its profile shown in the upper part 
of the picture, its wind-cutting fore-part in 
the centre, symbolical of parting, indicate the 
features of the scene that remain indelibly 1111- 
pressed upon the mind. 2. those who are 
going away. Their state of mind is represented 
by oblique lines on the left. The color indi- 
cates the sensation of loneliness, anguish and 
dazed confusion, which is further illustrated 
by the faces carried away by the smoke and 
the violence of speed. One may also distin- 
guish mangled telegraph posts and fragments 
of the landscape through which the train has 
passed. 3. those who remain behind. The per- 
pendicular lines indicate their depressed con- 
dition and their infinite sadness dragging 
everything down towards the earth. The math- 
ematically spiritualized silhouettes render the 
distressing melancholy of the soul of those 
that are left behind." 

In Berlin during the European tour an 
offer was made to buy the trilogy but, as 
Boccioni wrote to both Russolo and Severini, 
he refused to let it go. 

When Boccioni's book Pittura, scultura 
futuriste carne out, the three paintings were 
harshly criticized by his Futurist comrades 
themselves and by Carrà in particular who 
claimed to have been the first to propound 
the idea that sounds, noises, and odors can be 
matched with their figurative representation 
in images. On June 3, 1914, Carrà wrote to 



Severini: "Boccioni's book . . . is false in its 
basis and superficial from the pictorial stand™ 
point. That he should believe he can base his 
Futurist painting on his three little pictures, 
States of Mind, is more than puerile." 

Today, however, it is precisely that trio 
of pictures which is considered the summit 
of the Futurist aesthetic. Carrieri (1950) stated 
that "Boccioni goes beyond the Cubist mode 
of organization when, breaking with every 
calculation and structural scheme, he puts his 
curves and spiraling vibrations into action in 
a dense and varicolored enfolding and inter- 
secting movement. The atmosphere is liter- 
ally shattered. We are witnessing the first 
atomic bombardment of Futurist painting. 
Serpentine curves and fiery disks traverse the 
narrow spaces swarming with shapes and 
bodies in the process of dissolving into scales 
and squalls. Electrical Catherine wheels shoot 
off from the antennae, and in their swift 
motions provoke vertical and horizontal fìs- 
sions. The air is like a plastic incandescent 
material: The forms and sounds imprint them- 
selves on it. ..." 

Argan (1953) examined the way the sym- 
bolic element is translated into specific forms 
in these pictures. Calvesi (1958) pointed out the 
"theme of social 'modernism,' of the 'utterly 
new psychology' of modem life: The tumul- 
tuous figuration of a departure becomes the 
virtual symbol of a new way of life, whipped 
about and convulsive, set to the extremely 
rapid rhythm of the new means of transpor- 
tation. The 'technico-dynamic' theme is even 
more in evidence here. But the preoccupation 
that begins to come to the fore in Boccioni, 
in contrast to the tendencies taking shape in 
the Futurist movement which favored a me- 
chanical and cinematographic interpretation of 
dynamism, is one of humanizing and 'drama- 
tizing' the Modernist thesis. Toward that end 
he decisively set as his aim the representation 
of the 'state of mind.' " 

In the three paintings Calvesi also finds 
Expressionist elements in both iconography 
and theme; in particular he cites Edvard Munch 
in discussing the significance Boccioni gives 



121 



to the linear movements as well as the expres- 
sive function of his line itself. For Ballo (1964), 
"the theme of the Farewells, of the station, 
the departure, had become for Boccioni a fun- 
damental motif of modem life experienced 
as state of mind: The psychological premise 
is always the emotional charge, the memory 
of the mother who remains behind, the feel- 
ings of sadness and loneliness, while civiliza- 
tion progresses in the tangled swarm of the 
metropolis." 

In 1967 Calvesi examined more deeply 
the spatial-temporal conception of the Farewells 
and affirmed that there were not various cou- 
ples embracing but "one and the same couple 
reproduced at different points in space and 
time. Boccioni probably intended to flank the 
actual embrace with the memory of that em- 
brace as it accompanies the course of the train 
in a simultaneity of succession, unity, perspec- 
tive, and time." He proposed also a parallel- 
ism between the poetic of the states of mind 
and the philosophy of Henri Bergson: "Berg- 
son himself speaks of 'state of mind, ' precisely 
as the container of 'duration. ' And in the quest 
for a 'synthesis of what one remembers and 
what one sees' — the words are Boccioni's 
own — he fmds the same optical-mnemonic 
principle." 

Martin (1968) stated that the triptych is a 
"minor masterpiece" whose three elements 
should be viewed in a specific sequence: The 
Farewells in the center flanked at the left by 
Those Who Go and at the right by Those Who 
Stay. 

In an analysis of the canvases Golding 
(1972) went back to an idea he had examined 
in 1959 concerning the introduction of num- 
bers into The Farewells: "The stenciled letters, 
introduced into Cubist painting only a few 
months earlier, defiantly proclaim the picture's 
true modernity." His judgment is decidedly 
positive, though adopting an idea proposed 
by Martini in 1965 as to what lay behind 
Boccioni's decision to cast his idea into three 
separate canvases: "The States of Mind are a 
remarkable achievement, coming as they do 
from a young man who was digesting five 



years' worth of revolutionary painting in the 
course of a few brief weeks. But once again 
their brilliant modernity is based on a strongly 
retrogressive support. For their iconography 
is almost certainly derived from a work that 
must have seemed, even by Boccioni's stili fun- 
damentally provincial standards, somewhat 
'passatista.'' In 1898 the Breton painter Charles 
Cottet had shown at the Venice Biennale a trip- 
tych called Les Pays de la mer (with, on the 
right, Ceux qui restent, in the center Les Adieux, 
and on the left, Ceux qui partent); this had been 
installed the following year in the Museo 
Bottancini (now the Museo Civico) in Padua, 
where Boccioni had spent some of his stu- 
dent years. And whereas the confrontation 
serves only to accentuate the dynamic inten- 
sity of Boccioni's reworking of the same 
theme, it demonstrates more forcefully than 
words could ever express the precariousness 
of the visual basis on which his modem vi- 
sion of the universe was being built." 

The force of these works lies in the abso- 
lute difference among the three canvases. In 
the first, The Farewells, a confusion of lines, 
forms, and objects creates the image that 
moves forward along with the train winding 
into space. In Those Who Go oblique lines indi- 
cate the direction of the movement. In Those 
Who Stay straight lines in vertical succession 
define the static, even stationary tenor of the 
representation. 

The symbolism Boccioni attributed to the 
direction or stasis of his lines extended also to 
the choice of colors: A warm tone — red 
— prevails in the excitement of the departure 
and the crowded succession of farewells spo- 
ken or gestured; a cold tone — blue — gives the 
idea of the travelers' movement. As in The 
Laugh (no. 53), one has the impression that 
he may have superimposed straight-line seg- 
ments and geometrical impressions over es- 
sentially flowing lines, though without in any 
way suggesting volumes or depth in the image 
which is simply laid out over the surface with 
its planes and colors. Even in more abstract 
representations such as these, Boccioni never 
dispensed with references to realistic elements 



122 




123 




56c 



124 



and certainly never limited himself to explor- 
ing relationships between lines and colors in 
accord with a purely formai mode of vision: 
The object is part of the idea, and it is the 
pursuit of the idea that guides the artist's ef- 
forts without his ever losing sight of the ini- 
tial stimulus, something real the eye as well 
as the mind can grasp. 

Besides the earlier version in Milan, which 
is stili rooted in an Expressionist approach, 
there is a trilogy drawn in pencil with an ex- 
tremely precise and definite technique and 
which, iconographically, mingles elements 
from the two series. Another version of the 
three pictures was executed in woodcut after 
originai pen drawings derived directly from 
the paintings and made for reproduction in 
the review Der Sturm. A number of oil stud- 
ies as well as drawings can be presumed to 
have preceded the series of paintings because 
realistic elements predominate in them. 



exhibitions: No. 56a — Paris 1912, no. 1, p. 25 
(ili.: Lesadieux); London 1912, no. 1, p. 2 (ili.: Leave- 
taking); Berlin 1912, no. 1, p. 2 (ili.: Abschied); 
Brussels 1912, no. 1, p. 25 (ili.); Rome 1913, no. 2; 
Rotterdam 1913, no. 2 (Collection E T. Marinetti); 
Florence 1913-14, no. 10; Naples 1914, no. 1; Milan 
1916-17, no. 64 (ili.); Milan 1924, no. 11; Milan 1933; 
Rome 1948, no. 20; New York 1961, no. 38, p. 50; 
Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 31; Venice 1986, p. 112 

No. 56b — Paris 1912, no. 2 (Ceux qui vont); 
London 1912, no. 2 (Those Who Are Going Away); 
Berlin 1912, no. 2 (Die Abreisenden); Brussels 1912, 
no. 2; Rome 1913, no. 3; Florence 1913-14, no. 9; 
Milan 1916-17, no. 65 (ili.); Milan 1924, no. 11 (ili.); 
Rome 1925, no. 8; Milan 1933; Rome 1948, no. 21; 
New York 1949 (ili. pi. 7); New York 1961, no. 42, 
p. 51; Paris 1980; Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 33; 
Venice 1986, p. 113 

No. 56c — Paris 1912, no. 3 (Ceux qui restent); 
London 1912, no. 3 (Those Who Remain Behind); Berlin 
1912, no. 4 (Die Zuruckbleibenden); Brussels 1912, 
no. 3; Rome 1913, no. 4; Rotterdam 1913, no. 4; 
Florence 1913-14, no. 11; Naples 1914, no. 3; Milan 
1916-17, no. 66 (ili.); Milan 1924, no. 11 (ili.) (Trittico: 
Stati d'animo); Rome 1925, no. 9; Milan 1933; Rome 
1948, no. 22 (Quelli che tornano); New York 1949 (ili. 
pi. 6); New York 1961, no. 40, p. 51; Hamburg 1963, 
no. 24; Paris 1980 ref.2; Philadelphia 1980-81, 
no. 35; Venice 1986, p. 114 

No. 56d— New York 1961, no. 36, pp. 35, 143; 
New York 1973-74, no. 205 (verso); Philadelphia 
1980-81, no. 30; New Haven 1983, no. 25, p. 42 



No. 56e— New York 1949 (ili. pi. 3); New York 
1961, no. 37, p. 49; Paris 1973, no. 17; Milan 1973-74, 
no. 104; Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 32; Venice 1986, 
p. Ili 

No. 56g— Rome 1925, no. 16; Milan 1933; Rome 
1959, no. 69; Winterthur 1959, no. 11; Paris 1973, 
no. 15; Milan 1973-74, no. 101; Genevà 1977-78, 
no. 14; Milan 1982-83, no. 68; Venice 1986, p. 116 

No. 56h— New York 1949 (ili. pi. 5); New York 
1961, no. 41, p. 49; Paris 1973, no. 18; Milan 1973-74, 
no. 103; Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 34; Venice 1986, 
p. Ili 

No. 56i— New York 1961, no. 44, p. 49; New York 
1973-74, no. 209; New Haven 1983, no. 26, p. 43 

No. 56j— Rome 1959, no. 67; Munich 1959-60, 
no. 13; Milan 1982-83, no. 70 

No. 56k— New York 1949 (ili. pi. 4); New York 
1961, no. 39, p. 48; Paris 1973, no. 19; Milan 1973-74, 
no. 102; Venice 1986, p. Ili 



literature: No. 56a — Apollinare 1 91 1 ; Apollinare 
1912; Rotterdam 1913; Mastrigli 1913 (ili.); Boccioni 
1914, no. 1, p. 457 (ili.: Gli addii: Stati d'animo [1911]); 
Sarfatti 1916, p. 13 (ili.) (Gli addii: Sviluppo della 
sensibilità futurista); Walden 1917, p. 33; Sarfatti 1924; 
Walden 1924, p. 19 (ili); Marinetti 1927 (ili.); Orazi 
1925, p. 810 (ili.); Dinamo Futurista 1933a (ili.); Buzzi 
1950, p. 23; Carrieri 1950, pi. 34, p. 34; Valsecchi 
1950 (ili.); Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 29, p. 35; 
Calvesi 1958a, pp. 157-58; Calvesi 1958b, p. 414; 
Calvesi 1959, p. 32; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 239; Rosenblum 1962, no. 125, p. 181; De Grada 
1962, pi. 15; Ballo 1964, no. 448, pp. 248-49; Martini 
1965; Jullian 1966, p. 74; Calvesi 1967, pp. 68-70, 72; 
Martin 1968, no. 81; Taylor 1968, p. 82; Bruno 1969, 
no. 142a; Kozloff 1973, no. 66; Tisdall and Bozzolla, 
1977, no. 35, p. 48; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 723, 
Lista 1986, p. 17 

No. 56b— Boccioni 1914, no. 2, p. 457 (ili.); Art 
italien moderne 1930, p. 26 (ili.); Buzzi 1950, p. 24; 
Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 32, p. 35; Calvesi 1959, 
p. 32; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 240; Ballo 
1964, no. 450; Jullian 1966, p. 74; Martin 1968, no. 
82; Taylor 1968, p. 82; Bruno 1969, no. 143a; Golding 
1972, no. 4, p. 13; Kozloff 1973, no. 67; Tisdall and 
Bozzolla 1977, no. 31, p. 45; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 724 

No. 56c— Boccioni 1914, no. 3, p. 457 (ili.); Orazi 
1925, p. 811 (ili.); Art italien moderne 1930, p. 26 
(ili.); Buzzi 1950, p. 25; Carrieri 1950, pi. 36, p. 35; 
Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 35, p. 35; Calvesi 1959, 
p. 32; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 242; Ballo 
1964, no. 452; Jullian 1966, p. 74; Martin 1968, 
no. 83; Taylor 1968, p. 82; Bruno 1969, no. 144a; 
Kozloff 1973, no. 68; Tisdall and Bozzolla 1977, 
no. 32, p. 45; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 725 

No. 56d— Calvesi 1958a, no. 60a, pp. 157-58; 
Taylor 1961 b, no. 193 (ili. reversed); Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 250; Ballo 1964, no. 433; Bruno 
1969, no. 139b; Calvesi 1973, no. 28; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 726 



125 




56g 



No. 56e— Carrieri 1950, pi. 85, p. 84; Argan and 
Calvesi 1953, fig. 27, p. 35; Calvesi 1958a, pp. 157-58; 
Taylor 1961b, no. 194; De Grada 1962, no. 67; Ballo 
1964, no. 434; Martin 1968, no. 28; Bruno 1969, 
no. 139c; Calvesi 1973, no. 29; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 728 

No. 56f— Calvesi 1958a, p. 163; Taylor 1961b, 
no. 195; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 238 (for- 
merly Collection Neil Walden, Berlin); Ballo 1964, 
no. 447; Bruno 1969, no. 142b; Calvesi and Coen 
193, no. 730 



No. 56g— Boccioni 1914, p. 467, no. 2 (ili); Buzzi 
1950, p. 21; Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 31, p. 30; 
Castelfranco and Valsecchi 1956, p. 71, pi. 1; Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 236; De Grada 1962, pi. 13; 
Ballo 1964, no. 437; Martin 1968, no. 63; Bruno 1969, 
no. 140a; Caramel and Pirovano 1973, pi. 24, 
no. 18; Del Guercio 1980, p. 29; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 731; Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 49, ili. 23 

No. 56h— Carrieri 1950, pi. 37, p. 35; Valsecchi 
1950 (ili.); Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 35; Calvesi 
1958a; Taylor 1961b, no. 200; De Grada 1962, no. 69; 



128 



56i 



Ballo 1964, no. 436; Bruno 1969, no. 140b; Calvesi 
1973, no. 35; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 732 

No. 56i — Taylor 1961b, no. 201; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 241 (formerly Collection Neil 
Walden, Berlin); Ballo 1964, no. 449; Bruno 1969, 
no. 143b; Calvesi 1973, no. 36; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 736 

No. 56j— Argan and Calvesi 1953, fìg. 30, p. 30; 
Calvesi 1958a, p. 157; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 235; Ballo 1964, no. 440; Bruno 1969, no. 140h; 
Caramel and Pirovano 1973, no. 19, pi. 25 (acquired 



1933 by Amiceto Masoni); Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 737 

No. 56k— Carrieri 1950, pi. 38, p. 35; Valsecchi 
1950 (ili.); Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 33, p. 35; 
De Grada 1962, no. 68; Ballo 1964, no. 443; Martin 
1968, no. 65; Bruno 1969, no. 141d; Birolli 1971, p. 197; 
Calvesi 1973, no. 34; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 741 



129 




130 



131 



Simultaneous Visions 
Visioni simultanee 191 1 

Oil on canvas 

23 7 /sX23 7 /8Ìn. (60.5 X 60.5 cm.) 

Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal 



In the chapter on simultaneity in his Pittura, 
scultura futuriste Boccioni attributed great 
significance to this painting. "The first paint- 
ing to appear with an affirmation of simulta- 
neity was mine and had the following title: 
Simultaneous Visions. It was exhibited at the 
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris, and in the 
same exhibition my Futurist painter friends 
also appeared with similar experiments in 
simultaneity." 

In the catalogue of the Futurist show held 
in London in March 1912 at the Sackville Gal- 
lery he wrote that this canvas was meant to 
express "the sensation of the inside and the 
outside, of space and motion, in ali directions 
experienced on approaching a window. " This 
image thus combines two movements — that 
of the face, which is splintered as it immerses 
itself in the chaos of the Street and that of the 
whirling synthesis of urban turmoil, swarm- 
ing with gestures, jolts, and sounds. 

The vortex of the modem city is repre- 
sented by angles that meet, intersect, and pass 
across each other, by concentric forms that em- 
body a whirling motion, and by the cut planes 
that indicate a dynamic and rapid passage of 
time. "Simultaneity is for us lyrical exalta- 
tion to the plastic manifestation of a new 
absolute — speed; of a new and marvelous 
spectacle — modem life; of a new fever — sci- 
entific discovery," wrote Boccioni, declaring 
his freedom from nineteenth-century sensibil- 
ity. In Simultaneous Visions he expressed the 
necessity "to Americanize ourselves, to enter 
into the overwhelming vortex of modernity 
through its crowds, its automobiles, its tele- 
graphs, its bare lower-class neighborhoods, its 
sounds, its shrieks, its violence, its cruelties, 
its cynicism, its implacable careerism — in short 



to present ali the savage antiartistic aspects of 

our rime." 

In the present painting and in the similar 

The Street Enters the House, both painted by 

Boccioni after his trip to Paris in November 

1911, one breathes an atmosphere different 

from that of the States of Mind (no. 56). Here 

the brushwork has become more raw and 

harsher; the tones are more violent, almost 

unpleasant. The clash of colors represents that 

emotion produced by the mass of visual and 

auditory stimuli generated by a modem city. 

These works were influenced by Cubist mod- 

els, although a hatching technique recalls the 

artist's experiments with Divisionism. 

According to Calvesi (1976), Simultaneous 
Visions has its roots in Delaunay's depictions 
of the Eiffel Tower, both in the representa- 
tion of houses collapsing and converging at 
the center of the picture and in the placement 
of the woman at the window. Boccioni inter- 
prets with dramatic emphasis the flow of forces 
and dynamic relations between objects, un- 
derscoring the innumerable tensions with pen- 
etrating and cutting shapes. Only in the works 
of 1913 will the concept of simultaneity be 
resolved in a more synthetic and less frag- 
mented manner. 

This was one of the some twenty paint- 
ings that Wolfgang Borchardt bought from 
the 1912 Futurist show at Gallery Der Sturm 
in Berlin. 



exhibitions: Paris 1912, no. 7 ( Visions simultanées); 
London 1912, no. 7 (Simultaneous visions); Berlin 1912, 
no. 7 (Scheinvision); Brussels 1912, no. 7; Milan 
1982-83, no. 65 and cover; Venice 1986, p. 122 

literature: Walden 1912, no. 3; Rotterdam 1913 
(listed as one of the works sold from the Berlin 1912 
exhibition to Wolfgang Borchardt); Boccioni 1914, 
p. 458, no. 7; Carrieri 1950, pi. 50, p. 12 (Visione 
simultanea della finestra); Argan and Calvesi 1953, 
fig. 24, p. 36 (La strada entra nella casa); Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 278; Ballo 1964, no. 425 (La 
strada entra nella casa); Calvesi 1967, p. 13, pp. 268-69; 
Bruno 1969, no. 137 (La strada entra nella casa); 
Calvesi 1976; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 744 



132 




133 



The Strengths of a Street 
Le forze di una strada 1911 

Oil on canvas 

39 3 /8X31i/ 2 in. (100X80 cm.) 
Hànggi Collection, on loan to Kunstmuseum 
Basel 

Studyfor "The Strengths of a Street" 
Studio per Le forze di una strada 1911 

Pendi on paper 

nVixMysin. (43.8X37.1 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, 
Milan 

Painted after Boccioni's trip to Paris in No- 
vemher 1911, The Strengths of a Street shows 
signs of his encounter with Cubism. It was 
first exhibited in Paris in February 1912 and 
was included in the Futurist shows that trav- 
eled from the French capital to major Euro- 
pean cities. In a 1912 photograph The Strengths 
of a Street appears in the window of the Galerie 
Der Sturm in Berlin, on the occasion of the 
exhibition of Futurist painting held there in 
Aprii and May of that year. The work was in 
the collection of Herwarth Walden, director 
of Der Sturm and then of his wife Neil until 
1954, when it and other paintings in her pos- 
session were sold at auction in Stuttgart. 

The painting is one of the most abstract 
in Boccioni's oeuvre; it makes no descriptive 
concessions, and the representation is reduced 
to a few essential hints. The Strengths of a Street 
belongs to the same period as the triptych States 
of Mind (no. 56); in it, however, Boccioni 
achieved a greater structural simplification, 
eliminating curved forms in order to express 
the sense of movement synthetically. "One 
can also see in our paintings," he wrote in the 
catalogue for the Paris show, "spots, lines, and 
areas of color that do not correspond to any 
reality, but, according to a law of our inner 
mathematics, musically prepare and increase 
the emotion of the spectator. 

"We thus create in some way an emo- 
tional setting, seeking by intuitive strokes the 
sympathies and attachments that exist between 



the outer (concrete) scene and the inner (ab- 
stract) emotion. Those seemingly illogical and 
inexplicable lines, spots, and areas of color 
are actually the mysterious keys to our paint- 
ings. . . . We are destroying everyday, in our- 
selves and in our paintings, the realistic forms 
and obvious details that stili serve to establish 
a bridge of intelligence between ourselves and 
the public/' 

In the only known drawing related to the 
painting, Boccioni accentuated the squared 
lines by creating angles of intersection that 
become obvious through color. While in the 
painting these extensions of luminous and dy- 
namic rhythms stand out above ali, in the draw- 
ing the scene appears more clearly defined. 




134 




58a 



exhibitions: No. 58a — Paris 1912, no. 9 (Les forces 
d'une me); London 1912, no. 9 (The Forces of a Street); 
Berlin 1912, no. 9 (Die Macht der Strasse); Brussels 
1912, no. 9; Milan 1924 (illustrateci but not included 
in list of works exhibited) 

No 58b — Winterthur 1959, no. 42; Newcastle upon 
Tyne 1972, p. 32; Paris 1973, no. 21; Milan 1973-74, 
no. 113; Dusseldorf 1974, no. 48; Milan 1982-83, 
no. 75 



literature: No. 58a— Walden 1912, ref; Rotterdam 
1913; Boccioni 1914, no. 9, p. 458; Sarfatti 1916, p. 
13 (ili. : Le forze di una strada [Attuazione delle teoriche 
futuriste]); Walden 1918, p. 44 (ili; Collection Walden, 
Berlin); Walden 1924, p. 17 (ili.); Buzzi 1950, p. 29; 



Carrieri 1950, pi. 20, p, 21; Giani 1950 (ili.: Linee 
forza di una strada); Valsecchi 1950; Argan and Calvesi 
1953, fig. 36, p. 34 (Kunstmuseum Basel, Collection 
N. Urech Walden); Calvesi 1958a, p. 162; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 281; De Grada 1962, no. 72; 
Ballo 1964, no. 455, p. 298; Calvesi 1967, pp. 72, 
295-96; Martin 1968, no. 78; Bruno 1969, no. 145a; 
Gerhardus 1977, no. 51; Tisdall and Bozzolla 1977, 
no. 28, pp. 42-43; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 747; 
Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 56, ili. 25 

No. 58b— Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 31; Taylor 
1961, no. 217 (1912); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 289; Ballo 1964, no. 454; Martin 1968, no. 79; 
Bruno 1969, no. 145b; Birolli 1971, p. 16; Kozloff 
1973, no. 63; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 748; 
Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 56, ili. 26 



135 



Horizontal Volumes 
Costruzione orizzontale 1912 

Oil on canvas 

37 3 / 8 x37 5 /8 Ìn. (95X95.5 cm.) 
Signed on back: U. Boccioni 
Bayerische Staatsgemàldesammlungen Mùnchen 
— Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich 



This painting was first exhibited in February 
1913 in the foyer of the Teatro Costanzi in 
Rome. At that time the writer Emilio Cecchi 
pointed out Boccioni's success in achieving 
"a solid connection of luminous planes, force- 
lines, and volumes. " During this period 
Boccioni's investigation of pictorial plasticity 
was paralleled by a study of compenetration 
in sculpture; this doublé interest is evident 
when the present painting is compared with 
Antigraceful (no. 86), a plaster model later cast 
in bronze. As Boccioni remarked: "My talent 
has begun to develop, and I propose to real- 
ize, by means of its diligent and enthusiastic 
experiments, the concept of fusing the object 
and its surroundings, with a consequent 
compenetration of planes. I propose, in short, to 
bring the figure to life in its surroundings with- 
out making it the slave of artificial or fixed 
lights, or of a supporting piane." 

In Pittura, scultura futuriste Boccioni wrote: 
"The planes and volumes of an object and its 
setting are no longer isolated and absolute, 
inscribed in so many spaces regulated by a per- 
spective sequence, but compenetrate each other 
insofar as they are necessary to the formation 
of a new individuality, to the construction of 
the autonomous organism (painting), which 
the artist must create." 

This concept of the simultaneity of vision 
— the eye perceiving at the same time the ob- 
ject and the setting that grasps and absorbs it, 
thus forming a unity based on the reciprocai 
exchange of forces — absorbed Boccioni espe- 
cially around 1912, although signs of this 
development are evident in previous works. 

Boccioni pointed out that "the concept 
of a closed, finite, and measurable object is 



the fruit of the traditional objective and pho- 
tographic concern to redo the object and of 
the concern to place oneself in front of the ob- 
ject, to stare at it, and thus to detach it from 
life in order to transport it into art. . . . These 
procedures result in analytical enumeration, 
impassive and powerless to create drama. We, 
on the other hand, want to produce the plas- 
tic result of object + setting, arresting the con- 
struction of the object precisely at the point 
where poetic intuition suggests the comple- 
mentary help of the setting. It is in this in- 
stant that the element of the setting enters into 
the element of the object and forms a simul- 
taneous compenetration of planes." 

Golding (1972) stressed that the dynamic 
dissolution of space is achieved in a more ef- 
fective and convincing fashion in Boccioni's 
paintings than in his simultaneous experiments 
in sculpture. "This is partly due," Golding 
noted, "to the effects of transparency which 
obviously at this moment in time carne more 
easily to painting than to sculpture, and also 
to the use of color, which in the spiralling 
rhythms which echo each other like ripples in 
a well also give the painting a life and vibrancy 
which one feels the sculpture must have lacked. 
Boccioni was clearly aware of the problems 
posed by the confrontation between the two 
mediums, and two slightly later works show 
him coming to grips with them, with his now 
familiar approach which involved a blending 
in equal degrees of daring and compromise." 

exhibitions: Rome 1913, no. 7 (Costruzione oriz- 
zontale); Rotterdam 1913, no. 7; Florence 1913-14, 
no. 3 (Dimensioni orizzontali); Rome 1914, no. 12 
(Costruzione dinamica orizzontale); Milan 1916—17, no. 
32 (Volumi orizzontali); Rome 1925, no. 13 (Volumi 
orizzontali); Milan 1927 (Volumi orizzontali); Paris 
1973, no. 22; Milan 1973-74, no. 161 (Volumi oriz- 
zontali); Dusseldorf 1974, no. 58; Venice 1986, p. 128 

literature: Cecchi 1912; Sarfatti 1916, p. 15 (Co- 
struzioni orizzontali [Primi studi futuristi]); Calvesi 
1958a, no. 60b, p. 164; Archivi del futurismo 1962, 
no. 271; De Grada 1962, pi. 18 (Volumi orizzontali); 
Ballo 1964, no. 460, p. 322; Martin 1968, no. 114; 
Bruno 1969, no. 147a; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 
751; Crispolti 1986, pi. 8 



136 




137 



Matter 

Materia 1912 
Oil on canvas 

88 5 /8X59in. (225xl50cm.) 
Private collection 

(This painting is noi in the exhibition.) 

Matter is the work in which the artist succeeded 
most fully in realizing his theories about 
compenetration of planes and in expressing a 
relationship between figure and surroundings 
that is not too deeply indebted to Cubism. 
The result is a vibrant and transparent paint- 
ing whose shapes are molded by color and 
light rather than by their own volumes. 

When the painting was exhibited in the 
foyer of the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1913, 
Roberto Longhi, then a young critic and one 
of the first to take the Futurists seriously, was 
quick to sense the value of Boccioni's experi- 
mental efforts: "His essential, genuinely ar- 
tistic talent is that of being able to elevate to a 
lyrical piane, by the force of his utterly warm 
and ardent painting, what with others remains 
no more than fiat statement. Thus the com- 
penetration of planes, which in Cubism is often 
only an arbitrary prolongation of lines, with 
him is a true and proper compenetration, 
with genuine material substance, of planes that 
are colorful, vibrant, efflorescent, atomic. 
Consider in Matter the magical effects of the 
radially conceived composition." 

The Symbolist effects, the colors chosen 
as complementaries, the dynamism of inter- 
crossing planes — ali combine here to create a 
spatial complexity that is not solely based on 
the structural organization of the image. The 
composition's fulcrum is the clasped hands 
which, together with the head, are the only 
naturalistic elements and are deliberately ren- 
dered grotesque. In other works, especially in 
those immediately preceding Matter, Boccioni 
had intensified coloristic feeling by using beams 
of light shooting down from above and car- 
rying not only their own luminosity but also 
lines taken from the landscape or cityscape. 
Here the fusion between interior and exterior, 
indoors and outdoors, attains a consummate 



synthesis and a unity in which the two cate- 
gories can scarcely be recognized, much less 
separated. The woman (Boccioni's mother) 
— at once symbolic and terribly real — is cut 
through and across by the iron grille of a bal- 
cony, whose ornamentai motifs invade, pene- 
trate, and embed themselves in her, and by a 
swiftly prancing horse, which is counterpoised 
by a man in motion at the opposite side of 
the picture.The horse's gait is repeated in Elas- 
ticity (no. 69), a painting of the same time, 
and the position of the male figure at the right 
anticipates the falcade (to use an appropriately 
equestrian term) of the sculptures Unique Forms 
of Continuity in Space (no. 88) and Muscles in 
Velocity (no. 72e) of a slightly later date. 

The pictorial technique is extraordinarily 
complex: Here Boccioni succeeded in fusing 
markedly heterogeneous methods and styles 
in a single image. The continuous and ex- 
tremely rapid vibration of his brushwork gives 
shape, in a space interlaced with myriad lines, 
to the majestic figure of the artist's mother 
which is glimpsed and then engulfed by man- 
ifestations of light and movement. 

Taylor (1961) remarked that although 
Boccioni's language had now arrived at a 
greater abstraction, "it would no longer be a 
geometrical language since that had failed to 
penetrate to the internai vitality he wished to 
express." 

exhibitions: Rome 1913, no. 1; Rotterdam 1913, 
no. 1; London 1914, no. 4; San Francisco 1915, no. 
1142; Milan 1916-17, no. 49; Geneva 1920-21, no. 
26; Milan 1924, no. 24 (ili.); Rome 1925, no. 1 (re- 
produced upside down); Milan 1933; Rome 1959, no. 
77; Winterthur 1959, no. 18; New York 1961, no. 45; 
Hamburg 1963, no. 26; Paris 1973, no. 25; Milan 
1973-74, no. 162; Dusseldorf 1974, no. 55; Philadel- 
phia 1980-81, no. 23; Venice 1986, p. 128 

literature: Cecchi 1913; Longhi 1913; Boccioni 
1914, p. 463, no. 1 (ili.: Materia [Sviluppo della sensi- 
bilità futurista]); Severini 1933, p. 359; Benet 1949, 
no. 52; Carneri 1950, pi. 55, p. 49; Pastonchi 1950, 
p. 35; Sironi and Zervos 1950, p. 13; Argan and Calvesi 
1953, fìg. 44, p. 34; Calvesi 1958a, p. 164; De Micheli 
1959, pi. 11; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 275; De 
Grada 1962, no. 73; Ballo 1964, no. 463, pp. 321-22; 
Calvesi 1967, p. 175; Martin 1968, no. 113; Bruno 
1969, no. 148a (1911-12 [?]); Tisdall and Bozzolla 
1977, no. 71; Del Guercio 1980, p. 30; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 752; Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 70, ili. 34 



138 




60 



6ÌA 



61 a. Study Joy "Head + Light + Window" 
Studio 1912 

Ink on paper 

(30.8X21 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

B. Head Against the Light (The Artisti Sister) 
Studio per Testa + luce 1912 

Ink on paper 

4%x4in. (12.1 X 10.2 cm.) 
Signed top right: Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



140 



61b 



These two studies are connected with the 
sculpture Head + Light + Window, generally 
dated to 1911 on the authority of the artist 
himself in his Pittura, scultura futuriste. Although 
the sculpture was lost around 1917, photo- 
graphs and some written evidence testify to 
the importance of Boccioni^ new experiments 
in three dimensions. The sculpture was com- 
posed of a variety of materials. Marinetti's 
manifesto on Tactilism of January 11,1921, 
states that it was realized "with materials of 
absolutely contrary nature in weight and tac- 
cile value: iron, porcelain, and a woman's hair." 
Represented was a woman's head with horse- 



hair tresses and a glass eye. A scrap of canvas 
with pieces of glass rested on the head; rays of 
light extended from the head and struck a 
house sitting on the woman's shoulder. The 
face was constructed frontally, but to judge 
from the photographs, the profile emerging 
from a beam of light could be intuited. 

The date of the sculpture seems open to 
question. In 1911 Boccioni was thoroughly 
taken up with working out his theories on 
states of mind and was not yet acquainted with 
Cubist decomposition, so it is unlikely that 
he had come to grips with the problems of 
working in three dimensions. He may have 



141 



claimed an earlier date for this sculpture in 
order to make it appear that he had antici- 
pated the Cubists' three-dimensional construc- 
tions and the aggregations of heterogeneous 
materials Picasso began to turn out in 1912. 

The idea of a pyramidal visualization of 
light concentrated into a beam or bundle of 
rays and circumscribed in a triangular form is 
found in one of the drawings in which Bocci- 
oni attempted to render the sensation of dif- 
ferent materials by linework that is heavier or 
lighter according to the transparency or opac- 
ity of the substance involved. If the connec- 
tion with the now-destroyed sculpture were 
not so obvious, it would be difficult to make 
out the lineaments of a face behind the dense 
interweaving in this drawing, doubtless the 



most abstract but at the same time most suc- 
cessali study in a series that preceded the real- 
ization of the sculpture. The other sketch seen 
here is more realistic and lacks the construc- 
tive force of the more pertinent study. 



exhibitions: No. 61 a— Philadelphia 1980-81, 
no. 43 

No. 61b— Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 42 

literature: No. 61 A — Taylor 1961b, no. 224 
(1912); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 319; Ballo 
1964, no. 473 (Studio per Fusione di una testa e di una 
finestra, 1912); Bruno 1969, no. 150d; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 766 

No. 61b— Taylor 1961b, no. 222 (1912); Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 316; Ballo 1964, no. 470 
(1912); Martin 1968, no. 143; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 772 



Study for the Sculpture "Empty and Full Abstracts 
ofa Head" 

Studio per Vuoti e pieni astratti di una testa 1912 

Gouache on paper 
22V4Xl7 5 /8Ìn. (56.5 x 44.7 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Collection Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick 



Like nos. 61a and 61b, this work is connected 
with Boccioni's investigations into plastic 
forms. It seems to be a preparatory study for 
the sculpture Empty and Full Abstracts ofa Head, 
a work destroyed immediately after the art- 
isti death and known only from a few photo- 
graphs. It is certain that the sculpture was more 
traditional than the Head + Light + Window, 
not least because it was done in a single mate- 
rial, plaster. Furthermore it was not essentially 
three-dimensional; the head looks less like a 
portrait in the round than like a relief with 
high prominences and very deep hollows. 
The face was markedly deformed by force- 
lines cutting across the features and forming 
intense concavities. 



In summarizing his ideas, Boccioni wrote 
in Pittura , scultura futuriste ."If we lock up the 
object in a more or less decisive and complete 
outline, we perpetrate an arbitrary act in that 
we detach a part from the indissoluble whole. 
We fall into the old pre-Impressionist pre- 
Rembrandt concern with appearance; we lose 
ourselves in a primordial infantile vision of 
reality which was taken as truth in other times, 
by primitive and simple minds, and was ap- 
propriate to conceptions of life based on fixed, 
static subdivisions between animate and in- 
animate, between object and ambience, and, 
in art, between solemn (human drama) and not 
solemn (drama of things). Now, if we wish to 
escape from the old artistic concept and create 



142 



new aspects of reality, if we wish to destroy 
the episode and create the object as experi- 
enced in its own forces and not broken down 
into the parts composing it — an analysis al- 
most always deleterious — we will see that 
lines, forms, and colors rendered as forces are 
the only dynamic expression possible. With 
the determination of these forces, the object 
is interpreted in its characteristic potentiality, 
stripped of ali sentimental value, fully alive in 
its dynamism." 

In the present work Boccioni studied the 
relationship between the face and what is out- 
side it by prolonging the lines that break up 



the features, thereby producing rigid angles. 
The planes, cut through by light, become im- 
pacted into the face itself but in a very differ- 
ent manner than in Cubist sculpture — here 
there is a different type of equilibrium, one 
that is not static but dynamic. The energy of 
the lines originating in the face extends well 
beyond the head itself and penetrates into and 
involves the surrounding space in a manner 
totally unlike the Cubists' constructional and 
analytic approach. 

literature: Ballo 1964, no. 478; Bruno 1969, 
no. 152c; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 777 



Table + Botile + House 

Tavola + bottiglia + caseggiato 1912 

Pencil on paper 

\3VsX9Vsm. (33.4X23.9 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, Milan 



Taylor's proposai (1961b) that this drawing is 
closely connected with the sculpture Develop- 
ment of a Bottle in Space (no. 87 ) was sec- 
onded by Martin (1968), Bruno (1969), and 
Golding (1972). The last compared its ren- 
dering of volumes with Cubist studies: "[This] 
sketch, which combines complexity and lu- 
cidity in equal degrees, may once again owe 
something to Juan Gris, the most expository 
of the great Cubists. Boccioni's drawing il- 
lustrates yet another phrase of the sculpture 
manifesto which suggests a sound basis for a 
new, more open treatment of sculptural form. 
'We have to start from the centrai nucleus of 



the object that we want to create,' Boccioni 
had declared, 'in order to discover the new 
laws that link it . . . invisibly but mathemati- 
cally to the apparent plastic infinite and the 

INTERNAL PLASTIC INFINITE. ' " 

By exploiting linear curves, Boccioni cre- 
ated a unified whole made up of bottle, glass, 
and piate. The piane on which these objects 
rest breaks off abruptly and extends wedgelike 
into their interiors. The houses in the back- 
ground appear to be distributed on a piane 
that does not intersect with the rest of the 
image. 

As Taylor suggested, a number of ele- 



144 



ments relate the present drawing to the three- 
dimensional Development of a Bottle in Space: 
the feeling of rotation, which is accentuated 
by the ascending curvilinear movement, and 
the supporting base, which participates in the 
dynamism of the object but remains detached 
from the energetic pulse. Calvesi (1973), how- 
ever, considers that this drawing is unrelated 
to the sculpture and suggests that it may be a 
study for another work, probably a painting, 
that was never realized. 



exhibitions: New York 1949 (ili. pi. 11); Munich 
1959-60, no. 12; Newcastle upon Tyne 1972, p. 36; 
Paris 1973, no. 28; Milan 1973-74, no. 202; Dusseldorf 
1974, no. 62; Milan 1982-83, no. 83; Venice 1986, 
p. 127 



literature: Carrieri 1950, pi. 41, p. 40; Argan and 
Calvesi 1953, fìg. 56; Calvesi 1958a, p. 165; Mazzariol 
1959, p. 17; Taylor 1961a, p. 86 (ili.); Taylor 1961b, 
no. 219; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 321; Ballo 
1964, no. 483; Bruno 1969, no. 154b; Golding 1972, 
p. 20; Calvesi 1973, no. 43; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 783 



Figure 

Figura 1912 

Watercolor and tempera on paper 
22 1 / 8 xl5 1 /4in. (56.3 x 38.7 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 

Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, Milan 



This watercolor, along with the painting 
Antigraceful (no. 66), is Boccioni's closest ap- 
proach to Cubist figuration and, in particular, 
to the phase of Picasso's work that culminated 
in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. When he was in 
Paris in late 1911, Boccioni saw works by Pi- 
casso in Kahnweiler's gallery, and he appears 
to have taken great interest in Picasso's African- 
influenced figures. The masklike face in the 
present painting is strikingly like the figure at 
the right in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. 

Here Boccioni carries the simplification 
of the pictorial forni to the point of grotesque 
accentuation of the facial features. While he 
developed his image through a pictorial ap- 
proach emphasized by a refined color sense, 
Picasso translated his treatment into something 
more plastic, more sculptural, with an acute 
and penetrating delineation of planes. 



In both iconography and form the pres- 
ent work also has much in common with Pi- 
casso's painting Friendship (Hermitage, Lenin- 
gradi Both paintings are distinguished by a 
hard, almost harsh treatment, but whereas Pi- 
casso molds the contours to bring out the plas- 
tic character, Boccioni injects so much impetus 
into his force-lines that their propulsion bursts 
the limits of the form itself. 

exhibitions: Milan 1973-74, no. 168; Milan 1982- 
83, no. 95 

literature: Argan and Calvesi 1953, p. 31; Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 286; Ballo 1964, no. 507; 
Bruno 1969, no. 159; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 784 



146 




64 



147 



65. Stili Life: Glass and Siphon 

Natura morta con sifone per seltz 1912 

Collage, gouache, and ink on paper 
12 l / 4 x8 3 /8Ìn. (31.1X21. 3 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Yale University Art Gallery (Gift of Collection 
Société Anonyme), New Haven 



This appears to be Boccioni's first work on 
paper incorporating external elements as col- 
lage: a scrap of newspaper and a piece cut from 
a Futurist handbill. 

The effect of decomposition evident in 
this mixed-medium work was adopted by 
Boccioni in 1912, reflecting his new interest 
in volumetrie aspeets. For stylistic reasons the 
drawing can be assigned to that year, though 
without absolute certainty. Since the Cubists' 
first works using collage date to the second 
half of 1912, it is difficult to determine who 
first used the new technique. It is certainly 
possible that Picasso and Braque on the one 
hand and Boccioni on the other hit on the same 
aesthetic solution simultaneously, though with 
profoundly different motivations. Boccioni's 
orientation was dynamic, aiming to fuse ob- 
ject and ambience in a single image by means 
of the compenetration of elements; the Cub- 
ists, however, used their bits and pieces of 
newsprint chiefly as a way of countering the 
photographic illusionism of the object depicted 
and of emphasizing the formai and structural 
autonomy of the picture itself 

exhibitions: Milan 1916-17, no. 318; New Haven 
1983, no. 20, pi. 4 

literature: Taylor 1961b, no. 270 (1914); Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 326; Ballo 1964, no. 485; 
Bruno 1969, no. 155; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 785 




Pablo Picasso, Stili Life: Cruet Set, 1912. Ink on 
paper, 12 3 /8X9 5 /s in. (31.4X24.4 cm.). The Metro- 
politan Museum of Art, The Alfred Stieglitz Col- 
lection, 1949 



148 




65 



149 



Antigraceful 
Antigrazioso 1912 

Oil on canvas 

31 Vi x 31 y 2 in. (80x80cm.) 
Private collection 



In "Fondamento plastico della pittura e scultura 
futuriste, 1 ' a chapter in his Pittura, scultura 
futuriste (1913), Boccioni wrote: "Gauguin's 
voyage to Tahiti, and the appearance of Cen- 
tral African idols and fetishes in the ateliers of 
our friends in Montmartre and Montparnasse, 
are events of historical destiny in European 
sensibility, like the invasion of a barbarie race 
into the organism of a decadent people! We 
Italians have need of the barbarie in order to 
renew ourselves, we Italians more than any 
other people, since our past is the greatest in 
the world and thus ali the more dangerous 
to our life! Our race has always held sway and 
has always renewed itself by barbarie con- 
tacts. We must smash, demolish, and destroy 
our traditional harmony, which makes us fall 
into a gracefulness created by timid and senti- 
mental cubs. We disown the past because we 
want to forget, and in art to forget means to 
be renewed." This passage clearly explains 
Boccioni's interest in the formai motifs of dis- 
tant and primitive civilizations, which were 
already being used by the Cubists. "Painting 
and sculpture in primitive epochs," wrote 
Boccioni, "are directed toward influencing and 
suggesting, and they use any means to do so, 
without the remotest hint of the stupid artistk 
exercise that is always outside reality. In those 
happy periods the word art is unknown, as 
is the concept of the artistic and the artificial 
subdivisions of painting, sculpture, music, lit- 
erature, poetry, philosophy. . . . Instead every- 
thing is architecture because everything in art 
must be the creation of autonomous organ- 
isms constructed with abstract plastic values, 
i.e., with the equivalents of reality. This is 
why we are resolutely and violently antiartistic, 
antipictorial, antisculptural, antipoetic, anti- 



musical. The works of art of savages, so fate- 
fully entering into the process of modem re- 
newal, prove the truth of what I say." 

Relying on Cubist figuration, Boccioni 
tried to destroy the concepts of proportion, 
harmony, and beautiful form that are charac- 
teristic of the tradition of Italian painting. 
"What we want to proclaim and impose on 
Italy," wrote Boccioni, "is the new sensibil- 
ity that gives to painting, sculpture, and ali 
the arts a new material to create new relations 
of form and color." 

In the present painting Boccioni created 
an image of extraordinary strength. The col- 
ors, playing on two orders of tonality, which 
range from browns to grays and metallic blues, 
are applied with a thick and loaded brush. The 
solidity is reinforced by the balanced construc- 
tive layout enclosed within the space of a 
room. In comparing it with previous works, 
the viewer sees a renewed interest in compo- 
sition and a more plastic, less dynamic ap- 
proach to the figure. 



exhibitions: Rome 1913, no. 8; Rotterdam 1913, 
no. 8; Milan 1916-17, no. 60; Milan 1924, no. 9; Rome 
1925, no. 11 (Studio della madre [Antigrazioso]); Milan 
1933; Rome 1948, no. 23; Venice 1950, p. 58, no. 11; 
Rome 1959, no. 86; Venice 1966, p. 12, no. 73; Tokyo 
1982, no. 30; Verona 1985-86, no. 76; Venice 1986, 
p. 131 

literature: Boccioni 1914, pp. 463, 468 (ili.); Soffici 
1914, n.p.; Sarfatti 1916, no. 39; Buzzi 1950, p. 32; 
Carrieri 1950, p. 47 (Compenetrazione di figura ambiente); 
Giani 1950 (ili); Argan and Calvesi 1953, pi. 41; 
Carrieri 1961, pi. 12; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
nos. 348, 387; De Grada 1962, no. 87; Ballo 1964, 
no. 502; Martin 1968, no. 123 (1912-13); Bruno 1969, 
no. 160a; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 787 



150 




66 



151 




152 



Abstract Dimensions 
Dimensioni astratte 1912 

Oil and tempera on canvas 
23 3 / 8 x23 5 /8Ìn. (59.5x60cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: U. Boccioni 
Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo 
Reale, Milan 



Boccioni thought Abstract Dimensions impor- 
tant enough to show in the 1913 exhibition in 
the foyer of the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Here 
he rethinks the volumes and linear tensions 
of the subject, doubtless as a consequence of 
his increasing interest in sculpture. There is a 
return to Divisionist techniques, but with 
broader and heavier brushstrokes that create 
large wedges of color which fit together in a 
mosaic-like fashion. 

Of his relationship to the Impressionists, 
Boccioni wrote: u My works, which some 
people (a little myopic or obsessed by recent 
Cubist notions) have sometimes accused of 
classical naturalism, have always shown my 
concern with carrying Impressionism forward 
and with benefiting from ali the naturalistic 
discoveries in color and form we owe to it. 
Through those means Futurist painting has 



managed to convey the solidity of bodies, 
without at the same time losing dynamism as 
the Cubists are doing, because Futurism trans- 
forms the disaggregating vibration of Impres- 
sionism into a solidification or centrifugai 
construction coupled with a centripetal con- 
struction which renders the object's weight 
and volume." 

In this transitional work, color plays a 
large part in emphasizing volumes and is it- 
self a plastic element. Here Boccioni is not 
concerned with the compenetration of planes 
nor does he try to make the figure an integrai 
part of the ambience in which it is immersed. 
His interest lies instead in the plastic construc- 
tion of the face and bust, so that what can be 
considered background is left to emerge from 
the neutral white of the prepared canvas. 



exhibitions: Rome 1913, no. 9; Rotterdam 1913, 
no. 9; Florence 1913-14, no. 4; Naples 1914, no. 5; 
Milan 1916-17; Milan 1973-74, no. 160; Milan 1982-83, 
no. 94 

literature: Carrieri 1950, pi. 51, p. 47 (Anti- 
grazioso); Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 43, p. 30; 
Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 272; De Grada 1962, 
no. 95 (Dimensione astratta, 1914); Ballo 1964, no. 506; 
Bruno 1969, no. 161; Caramel and Pirovano 1973, 
no. 23, pi. 10; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 794 



Woman in a Café: Compenetrations of 

Lights and Planes 
Donna al caffè — Compenetrazioni di luci e 

di piani 1912 

Oil on canvas 

33 7 / 8 x 33% in. (86 x 86 cm.) 
Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo 
Reale, Milan 



Although this painting was dated 1914 in the 
catalogue of the posthumous exhibition of 
Boccioni's works in 1916-17, Ballo (1964) as- 
cribed it to 1912 on the grounds of stylistic 
affinities with the Decomposition of Figures at 



a Table, assigned to that year by the artist 
himself. 

For Calvesi (1958) the forms composing 
this image are indebted to Picasso, with nota- 
ble iconographic similarities to the Spanish art- 
isti Portrait of a Woman, a painting that Henri 
de Pruraux published in La Voce in December 
1911 and which Boccioni, an assiduous reader 
of that Fiorentine review, must have seen there. 

In the present painting space has been 
subjected to a total deflagration into multiple 
elements fraught with movement and direc- 
tion, and it is precisely this process that sharply 
distinguishes the Futurists — Boccioni in par- 
ticular — from the Cubists. For Boccioni, "a 
picture by Picasso lacks law, lacks lyricism, 



153 



lacks will. It presents, unfolds, disrupts, splits 
into facets, multiplies the object's details to 
infìnity. The splitting of the object and the 
fantastic variety of aspects that a violin, a gui- 
tar, a glass can assume in his picture . . . astonish 
us in the same way as does the scientific enu- 
meration of the components of some object 
which, till now we had considered, out of ig- 
norance or by tradition, only as a unified 
whole. This was a discovery that had to come 
about, that was necessary to art. It is the truly 
valuable outcome of a development. . . . 
Emotion in art calls for drama. Emotion, in 
modem painting and sculpture, sings of the 
gravitation, the displacement, the reciprocai 
attraction of forms, masses, and colors: which 
means the movement, the interpretation of 
forces." 

In its schematic composition of forces and 
harsh opposition of lights and shadows, the 



woman's face in the present work recalls that 
in Empty and Full Abstracts of a Head (no. 62). 
The bottle and glass in the foreground sug- 
gest the same emphasis on form and the same 
break in continuity with the setting as in the 
Stili Life: Glass and Siphon (no. 65). Two beams 
of light project a dazzling giare and exist as 
purely formai elements of exactly the same 
nature as the other lines that compose the 
painting. 

exhibitions: Milan 1916-17, no. 28 (ili.: 1914); 
Geneva 1920-21, no. 22; Macerata 1922, no. 3; Rome 
1925, no. 14; Milan 1927, p. 23 (ili.); New York 1949 
(ili. pi. 14; 1914?); Paris 1973, no. 24; Milan 1973-74, 
no. 163; Milan 1982-83, no. 88; Venice 1986, p. 136 

literature: Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 39; Calvesi 
1958a, pp. 164-65; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 373; De Grada 1962, no. 93 (Scomposizione di figura 
di donna a tavola, 1913); Bruno 1969, no. 157 (1912?); 
Caramel and Pirovano 1973, no. 22, pi. 13; Guzzi 
1976, p. 127; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 795 



69 a. Elasticity 

Elasticità 1912 

Oil on canvas 

39 3 /s X 39 3 /s in. (100 X 100 cm.) 

Pinacoteca di Brera (Collection Jucker), Milan 

B. Study for "Elasticity" 

Studio per Elasticità 1912 

Pencil and gouache on paper 
18 3 /4X24 1 /4Ìn. (47.7 X 61.6 cm.) 
The Museum of Modem Art (Purchase), 
New York 



When this painting was part of the 1913 show 
in the foyer of the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, 
Roberto Longhi remarked: "It is through these 
experiments in the essential directions of the 
material that one arrives at this Elasticity (horse, 
rider, and landscape), which is, let it be said in 
a loud voice, a masterpiece, and wherein what 
was inevitable is affirmed: the predominance 
of living curves. The springing arabesque 



from the horse's nostrils to its fetlocks, a source 
of great energy, moves forward, sharp and cut- 
ting, scything through space. . . . The yellow 
dust coils in undulations like gunpowder about 
to explode; the fields and houses rotating in 
the distance cast their furrows, their dizzying 
thrusts, toward the figure in the foreground 
in an admirably reversed perspective ... ; the 
hollows of the sky are veiled in a haze of 
smoke that flattens out as it rises; the color, 
dense, scarlet, and dark, oozes toward the lin- 
ear outline and shades off, quickly saturating 
each isolated biade of form. Here pure chro- 
maticism, bringing together values of tone 
and values of shade, obtains results similar to 
those that Carrà, and Soffici even more, seek 
with a marginai chromaticism, alongside the 
absolute tone." 

Sarfatti in Gli Avvenimenti (1916) also 
stressed the importance of the painting, espe- 
cially in terms of the study of dynamic forces: 
"It does not propose to represent a moment 
of arrested movement, but the whole move- 
ment in progress. And at the same time the 
center, the ideal focus of the painting, is no 



154 




155 




156 



longer only in the eye and in the visual and 
emotional sensations of the artist who con- 
templates the spectacle from outside. It is in- 
stead both exterior and interior, since the artist 
also sinks into the vision and into the sensa- 
tion of the man on horseback — it is not only 
the rider who moves but also the whole out- 
side world, which, in a kind of frantic effort, 
participates in his motion." 

Taylor (1961) called attention to the dy- 
namic strength of the work: "In Elasticity planes 
seem to peel away from the forms, flowing 
gracefully into space. The horse and rider are 
not fragmented by an external light, but seem 
to dissolve in response to an internai force. 
The horse, for example, appears to have ma- 
terial substance, yet this we know only from 
the suggestions of the shifting planes. The lim- 
its of the form cannot be fixed. No longer do 



concrete objects resist the persuasive under- 
lying movement; ali is motion, and a sense of 
the object is given more through the nature 
of the action than through any suggestion of 
substance." 

In the months when he was completing 
Elasticity, Boccioni was engaged in a disagree- 
ment with his French contemporaries, in par- 
ticular Apollinare and Delaunay, about the 
concepts of simultaneous contrasts and dyna- 
mism. Some time later, in August 1913, 
Boccioni declared: "We are the ones who have 
said, amid the ironie distrust of the critics, 
that modem life is the sole inspiration of a 
modem painter, and therefore of dynamism. " 
In the present work the study of movement is 
accentuated, not only to express the artist's 
deeply held beliefs but also to oppose the static 
vision of Cubism. 




exhibitions: No. 69a — Rome 1913, no. 5; 
Rotterdam 1913, no. 5; Berlin 1913, no. 54; London 
1914, no. 3; San Francisco 1915, no. 1141; Milan 
1916-17, no. 51; Milan 1924, no. 28; Rome 1925, 
no. 18; Milan 1933; Berlin 1937; Rome 1948, no. 19; 
New York 1949 (ili. pi. 8); Rome 1953, no. 17 (1911); 
New York 1954, no. 13 (ili.); Kassel 1955, no. 66; 
Rome 1955-56, p. 56, no. 6; Munich 1957, no. 15; 
Rome 1959, no. 85; Venice 1960, p. 14, no. 34; New 
York 1961, p. 143, no. 47; Cologne 1962, no. 25 (cover 
ili.); Venice 1966, p. 11, no. 62; Los Angeles 1970-71, 
no. 6, pi. 180; Paris 1973, no. 23; Milan 1973-74, 
no. 169; Rome 1980-81, no. 7; Milan 1982- 83, no. 90; 
Verona 1985-86, no. 77; Venice 1986, p. 124 

literature: No. 69a — Prezzolini 1913; Boccioni 
1914, p. 463, no. 2 (ili.); Coquiot 1914, p. 65; Soffici 
1914, n.p.; Sarfatti 1916; Sarfatti 1917; Marinetti 1927; 
Costantini 1933, p. 130; Dinamo Futurista 1933b; 
Apollonio 1950, pi. 9; Buzzi 1950, p. 31; Carrieri 1950, 
p. 59; Castelfranco and Valsecchi 1956, p. 71, pi. 2; 
Valsecchi 1950; Argan and Calvesi 1953, pi. 45; 
Mazzariol 1958, p. 18; Calvesi 1958a, p. 165; Calvesi 
1959, p. 27; De Micheli 1959, p. 240; Carrieri 1961, 
pi. 21; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 359; De Grada 
1962, pi. 17; Ragghianti 1962, no. 392; Rosenblum 
1962, pi. 30, p. 191; Ballo 1964, no. 498; Jullian 
1966, p. 74; Martin 1968, no. 116; Taylor 1968, p. 82; 
Bruno 1969, no. 162a; Apollonio 1970, pi. 41; Birolli 
1971, p. 103; Bortolon 1971, no. 60; Gerhardus 1977, 
no. 52; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 799 

No. 69b— Taylor 1961b, no. 231; De Grada 1962, 
no. 71 (ili. reversed); Ballo 1964, no. 497 (ili. reversed); 
Bruno 1969, no. 162b; Calvesi 1973, no 44; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 798 



157 



70a. Man ai a Café Table, Paris 

Uomo a un tavolino da caffè 1911 

Ink on paper 

81/8X5% in. (20.6 x 13.7 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

B. Analytical Study of a Womarìs Head 
Against Buildings 
Studio di testa 191 1-12 

Ink on paper 

ll%x8 1 /4in. (30.2X21 cm.) 
Signed center left: Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



Though very different, these two drawings 
sum up Boccioni's experiments during 1911 
and 1912. The man seated at the small table 
retains objective aspects, although some details 
are barely suggested. The woman's head — 
once again that of the artist's mother — has 
been subjected to considerable deformation 
through the superimposition of planes and the 
simultaneous presence of interior and exte- 
rior. By faceting his lines Boccioni produced 
a formai solution very different from that seen 
in the drawing of the man. There is, how- 
ever, some attempt in the first drawing to con- 




70a 



158 




vey motion by repetition of lines and other 
elements around the face, and its curvature of 
lines conveys a greater feeling of plasticity and 
of volume than is evident in the second. In 
the Woman's Head the swiftly sketched and con- 
cisely rendered shapes seem to be worked out 
entirely on the surface and organized more 
on a pictorial than on a structural basis. 

The rapid technique characteristic of India 
ink eliminates any indication of chiaroscuro, 
emphasizes each stroke, and instills a marked 
tension into every line. Whereas in the first 
drawing the linear intensity seems confined 
through a centripetal motion, in the second it 
shoots out into space with a centrifugai charge: 
The first is more the product of a speculative 
and theoretical way of working, while the sec- 
ond reflects the immediacy of hand in the act 
of sketching. 



exhibitions: No. 70b — New York 1973-74, no. 219; 
Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 41; New Haven 1983, 
no. 27, p. 44 

literature: No. 70a— Taylor 1961b, no. 232 
(ca. 1913); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 380; Ballo 
1964, no. 417 (pendi drawing with brown ink on 
reverse of ruled 'Taverne de rHermitage" letterhead); 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 826 

No. 70b— Taylor 1961b, no. 188; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 262; Ballo 1964, no. 421; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 835 



159 



Dynamism of a Human Body 
Dinamismo di un corpo umano 1913 

Oil on canvas 

39 3 /8X39y 8 in. (100X100 cm.) 

Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo Reale, Milan 



In the series of "dynamisms" painted around 
1913 Boccioni made considerably more out 
of the impact of color as such than in his pre- 
ceding works. His color takes on a vivid and 
violent brilliance, and his paint becomes denser 
and more full-bodied. At the same time his 
principal aim became the exploration of spa- 
dai solutions. Space loses the three-dimen- 
sionality it had in his earlier works, which 
respected more-or-less traditional laws of per- 
spective. Now, instead, the laws it conforms 
to are those implicit in the subject represented 
and its relationship with the reality around it. 

"The plastic potentiality of the object," 
Boccioni wrote, "is its force, that is, its pri- 
mordial psychology. This force, this primor- 
dial psychology, permits us to create in the 
picture a new subject whose aim is not the 
narrative reproduction of an episode but in- 
stead the coordination of the plastic values of 
reality, a purely architectonic coordination lib- 
erateci from influences of literature or senti- 
ment. In this prime state of motion, which I 
am speaking of as something separate although 
it is not so in reality, the object is not viewed 
in its relative motion but is conceived in its 
vital lines which reveal how it would decom- 
pose in accord with the tendencies of its 
forces." 

This painting seems at first to represent 
abstract forms in an interweaving of tensions, 
but on closer inspection more objective ele- 
ments can be made out — for example, bun- 
dles of muscles — from which the viewer can 
intuit a body in movement. Figure and space 
move in simultaneity, and the figure's con- 
tours are plastic representations of dynamic 
action. The artist controls the impetuous vio- 
lence of the motion by balancing forms and 
colors. Lacerations and compenetrations of 



planes and violent chromaticisms make a dy- 
namic unified composition in which form and 
light assume absolute value. In his studies of 
dynamism Boccioni deals with progressive 
stages — from the body's first entering into 
movement, to the body's increasingly desta- 
bilized bound or leap ahead in a spiraling ex- 
pansion which dismembers its forms, to a 
concise rendering of the movement's direc- 
tion, and fmally to an almost total abstrac- 
tion of lines, which thrust forward, creating 
an impression of arrow-swift speed. 



exhibitions: Naples 1914, no. 26; Milan 1916-17, 
no. 48; Geneva 1920-21, no. 21; Milan 1924, no. 19 
(or no. 25); Rome 1925, no. 405; Milan 1927, no. 10; 
Venice 1950, p. 59, no. 12; Munich 1957, p. 50, 
no. 17; Venice 1960, p. 16, no. 47; New York 1961, 
no. 56; Venice 1966, p. 12, no. 83; Rome 1968-69, 
no. 3; Paris 1973, no. 29; Milan 1973-74, no. 176; 
Milan 1979-80, no. 353; Milan 1980, p. 125; Milan 
1982-83, no. Ili; Frankfurt 1985, p. 29; Verona 
1985-86, no. 78 

literature: Boccioni 1914, n.p. (ili.: 1913); 
Nicodemi and Bezzola 1939, no. 2305; Carrieri 1950, 
p. 66; Pastonchi 1950, p. 40; Sironi and Zervos 1950, 
p. 13; Ungaretti 1950, pi. 2; Argan and Calvesi 1953, 
pi. 52; Ballo 1956, p. 19; Calvesi 1958b, p. 166; 
De Micheli 1959, p. 240; Carrieri 1961, pi. 38; Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 357; Ballo 1964, no. 543; Jullian 
1966, p. 76; Calvesi 1967, p. 65; Magagnato 1967, 
p. 92; Martin 1968, no. 133; Bruno 1969, no. 168a; 
Birolli 1971, p. 125; Caramel and Pirovano 1973, p. 14, 
no. 25; Birolli 1983, no. 29; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 859; Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 78, ili. 39 



160 




161 



72. "Dynamism" Studies 



A. Studyfor "Unique Forms of Continuity in 
Space" 

Studio per Forme uniche della continuità nello 
spazio 1913 

Pencil on paper 
6VbX4 7 /8 in. (15.5X12.4 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 
The Museum of Modem Art (Gift of René 
d' Harnoncourt), New York 



F Dynamic Decomposition 

Scomposizione dinamica 1913 

Ink and watercolor on paper 
ll%x9%in. (30.2X24.5 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 
Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, 
Milan 



B. Muscular Dynamism 

Dinamismo muscolare 1913 

Pastel and charcoal on paper 
34 X 23% in. (86.3X59.1 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
The Museum of Modem Art (Purchase), 
New York 

c. Dynamism of a Human Body 

Dinamismo di un corpo umano 1913 

Ink on paper 

llV2X9in. (29.2X22.9 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, 
Milan 

D. Muscular Dynamism 
Dinamismo muscolare 1913 

Ink on paper 

HV2X9m. (29.2X22.9 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, 
Milan 

E. Muscles in Velocity 
Muscoli in velocità 1913 

Charcoal, ink, and gouache on paper 
121/4X9% in. (31.1x24.4 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, 
Milan 



exhibitions: No. 72a — Philadelphia 1980-81 
No. 72b— New York 1949 (ili. pi. 16; Collection 

Benedetta Marinetti, Rome); New York 1961, 

no. 51, p. 94; Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 47 
No. 72c— Paris 1973, no. 30; Milan 1982-83, 

no. 110 

No. 72d— Paris 1913; Rome 1913a; Florence 1913- 
14; London 1914; Milan 1973-74, no. 218; Milan 
1982-83, no. 115 

No. 72e— Milan 1973-74, no. 206; Milan 1982-83, 
no. 100 

No. 72f— Milan 1973-74, no. 217; Milan 1982-83, 
no. 107 




72a 




72c 



literature: No. 72a— Taylor 1961 b, no. 237; Ballo 
1964, no. 524; Bruno 1969, no. 168c; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 858 

No. 72b— Boccioni 1914, n.p. (ili.); Longhi 1914, 
pp. 41-42 (ili.); Soffici 1914, n.p. (ili.); Marinetti 
1927, n.p. (ili.); Carrieri 1950, pi. 73, p. 65; Argan 
and Calvesi 1953, fìg. 57; Ballo 1956, p. 17; Taylor 
1961b, no. 236; De Grada 1962, no. 84; Ballo 1964, 
no. 523; Martin 1968, no. 158; Bruno 1969, no. 45; 
Golding 1972, no. 3, p. 11; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 860 

No. 72c— Cahiers d'art 1950, p. 47 (ili.); Ungaretti 
1950, pi. 3; Taylor 1961a, p. 98; Taylor 1961b, no. 
240; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 299; Ballo 1964, 
no. 542; Bruno 1969, no. 168j; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 867 

No. 72d — Lacerba 1914, p. 88 (ili.: Voglio sintetizzare 
le forme uniche della continuità nello spazio); Taylor 1961b, 
no. 241; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 310; Bruno 
1969, no. 1681; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 869; 
Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 75, ili. 37 

No. 72e— Taylor 1961b, no. 238; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 305; Ballo 1964, no. 530; Mar- 
tin 1968, no. 159; Calvesi 1973, no. 47; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 875 

No. 72f— Taylor 1961b, no. 254; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 297; Ballo 1964, no. 538; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 882 




72e 



73a. Dynamism ofa Cyclist 

Dinamismo di un ciclista 1913 



Oiì on canvas 

27 V2 x 35% in. (70 x 90 cm.) 
Private collection 

(Tms painting is not in the exhibition.) 

b. Dynamism ofa Cyclist 
Dinamismo di un ciclista 1913 

Ink on paper 

6x^/2 in. (15.1X24.1 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 

Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, Milan 

c. Dynamism ofa Cyclist 
Dinamismo di un ciclista 1913 

Ink on paper 

23% X 22% in. (60 x 58. 1 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Collection Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick 

D. Dynamism of a Cyclist 

Dinamismo di un ciclista 1913 

Ink on paper 

81/4X121/8 in. (21x30.8cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, Milan 

e. Dynamism of a Cyclist 

Dinamismo di un ciclista 1913 

Tempera and ink on paper 
8V4Xl2%in. (21.lx30.8cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, Milan 

E Dynamism of a Cyclist 

Dinamismo di un ciclista 1913 

Ink wash and pencil on paper 
8V4 x 12 in. (21 x 30.5 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Yale University Art Gallery (Gift of Collection Société Anonyme), 
New Haven 



166 




167 



G. Dynamism ofa Cyclist 

Dinamismo di un ciclista 1913 



Ink wash and pencil on paper 
8 Vi X 12 in. (21 x 30.5 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 

Yale University Art Gallery (Gift of Collection Société Anonyme), 
New Haven 



"With the single unifying form [forma unica] 
that renders continuity in space," Boccioni 
wrote, "we are creating a form which is the 
sum of the potential developments of the three 
known dimensions. That is why we can render 
not merely a measured and finite fourth dimen- 
sion but a continuous projection of the forces 
and the forms intuited in their infinite unfold- 
ing. In point of fact, the unifying single dy- 
namic form we have proclaimed is nothing 
other than the suggestion of a form of mo- 
tion that appears for an instant and then loses 
itself in the infinite succession of its changing 
varieties." 

In these studies for the painting Dyna- 
mism of a Cyclist (1913) the forces of expan- 
sion increasingly resolve themselves into 
diagonal tension lines that indicate the cyclist's 



trajectory. Figure, bicycle, space form a sin- 
gle reality whose components are difficult to 
intuit. The bicycle's velocity is indicated by 
the reiteration of circular lines that reverber- 
ate, ricochet, rebound in the atmosphere like 
sound waves echoing and reechoing. The cy- 
clist is swallowed up by and into the projec- 
tion of his own forms which are themselves 
disintegrated by the motor energy unleashed. 

In his preparatory studies Boccioni sketched 
shapes and outlines, indicated the bicycle's dis- 
placement in space, and drew the vehicle's 
wheels and bars and handles straining to the 
point of deformation in the effort of the race. 
In the painting, however, he unified ali the 
charges and discharges of energy in a single 
global vision. 




73b 




73d 



73e 



exhibitions: No. 73a— Florence 1913-14, no. 2; 
Rome 1914, no. 2 (Dinamismo dì un ciclista) or no. 18 
(Ambiente emotivo di una bicicletta); London 1914, no. 2, 
p. 23 (ili.); Naples 1914, no. 22(?); San Francisco 
1915, no. 1140; Milan 1916-17, no. 47; Rome 1959, 
no. 89; Winterthur 1959, no. 22; New York 1961, 
no. 55, p. 96; Hamburg 1963, no. 27; Newcastle ' 
upon Tyne 1972, p. 15; Paris 1973, no. 31; Milan 
1973-74, no. 171; Dusseldorf 1974, no. 15" Venice 
1986, p. 134 

No. 73b— Milan 1973-74, no. 172; Milan 1982-83 
no. 117 

No. 73c— Newcastle upon Tyne 1972 p 14- 
Milan 1973-74, no. 179 

No. 73d— Paris 1973, no. 32; Milan 1973-74 
no. 173; Milan 1982-83, no. 118 

No. 73e— New York 1961, no. 54, p. 97; Milan 
1973-74, no. 170; Milan 1982-83, no. 120 

No. 73f— New York 1961, no. 53, p. 97; Philadel- 
phia 1980-81, no. 49; New Haven 1983, no. 35, p. 49 

No. 73g— New Haven 1983, no. 86, p. 48 

literature: No.73a— Boccioni 1914, n.p. (ili.); 
Soffici 1914, n.p. (ill.);Pastonchi 1950, p. 41;Valsecchi 
1950 (ili.) (1912-14); Argan and Calvesi 1953, 
fìg. 51, p. 30; Castelfranco and Valsecchi 1956, p. 72, 
pi. 4; De Micheli 1959, p. 240; Francastel 1959, p. 2; ' 



Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 362; De Grada 1962, 
no. 91; Ballo 1964, no. 558, p. 326; Martin 1968, 
no. 132; Bruno 1969, no. 170a; Birolli 1971, p. 154; 
Kozloff 1973, no. 88; Tisdall and Bozzolla 1977, no. 81; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 884; Roche-Pézard 1983,' 
no. 87, ili. 45; Crispolti 1986, p. 17 

No. 73b— Taylor 1961a, p. 97 (ili.); Taylor 1961b, 
no. 259; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 370; Ballo 
1964, no. 552; Martin 1968, no. 129; Bruno 1969, no. 
170b; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 886 

No. 73c— Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 365; 
Ballo 1964, no. 550; Bruno 1969, no. 170c; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 887 

No. 73d— Taylor 1961a, p. 97 (ili.); Taylor 1961b, 
no. 261; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 372; Ballo' 
1964, no. 554; Bruno 1969, no. 170d; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 888 

No. 73e— Taylor 1961b, no. 264; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 354; Ballo 1964, no. 557; 
Martin 1968, no. 130; Bruno 1969, no. 170e; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 889; Roche-Pézard 1983, no 88 
ili. 46 

No. 73f— Taylor 1961b, no. 260; Ballo 1964, 
no. 553; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 891 

No. 73g— Taylor 1961b, no. 262; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 364; Ballo 1964, no. 555; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 892 



170 



The Dynamism of a Soccer Player 
Dinamismo di un Foot-baller 1913 

Oil on canvas 

76 l /8X79 , / 8 in. (193.4x201 cm.) 

The Museum of Modem Art (The Sidney and Harriet Janis 
Collection, 1967), New York 



In this work Boccioni was mindful of Divi- 
sionist theory and laid out his composition 
along oblique lines and main diagonals that 
lead the light into the interior of the painting. 
The general conception profited from his in- 
vestigations into the quantitative strength of 
color and the luminous possibilities inherent 
in the juxtaposition of different tones. 

The painting bursts with vitality, and as 
the motion builds up within the image, it un- 
leashes a powerful energy which arises out of 
a synthesis of light and movement. At the 
sanie time there is a high degree of plastic 
abstraction — some parts of the athlete seem 
to project more markedly and to take on a 
three-dimensionality. Large beams of light 
slash through the image and emit a lumines- 
cence which makes the colors even brighter. 
The beams also create a circular movement 
that combines with the player's dynamism to 
cancel out the figure's specific forms, thus at- 
taining a maximum of impetus and power. 

Compared with Boccioni's other paint- 
ings representing dynamic motion and the lines 
of force composing it, and in which the color 
is laid on with quite dense and broad brush- 
work, here the composition takes on light 
through the vibration of the tiny accents of 
color. While he did recognize some differences 
between the various sources of energy and ac- 
celeration, it was more as a matter of succes- 
sive stages and degrees than of kind, of 
quantity more than quality. "It is true," he 
wrote, "that the wheels of a railroad carriage, 
the propeller of an airplane, have an extremely 
rapid movement in comparison with the legs 
of a man and a horse, but this is no more 
than a simple variation in form and rhythm. 
It is a question of degree of movement and 
above ali a question of tempo." 



exhibitions: Rome 1914 (?); London 1914, no. 5; 
San Francisco 1915, no. 1143; Milan 1916-17, 
no. 50; Geneva 1920-21, no. 29; Milan 1924, no. 1; 
Rome 1925, no. 2; Milan 1933; Rome 1948, no, 15, 
pi. 13; New York 1954, no. 14; New York 1961, 
no. 50, p. 89; Paris 1980, p. 45; Philadelphia 1980-81, 
no. 50; Venice 1986, p. 135 

literature: Luzzatto 1924; Costantini 1933, p. 130; 
Costantini 1934, p. 195 (1912); Buzzi 1950, p. 30; 
Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 59, p. 29; Calvesi 1958a, 
pp. 165-66; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 360; 
Ballo 1964, no. 560, p. 328; Martin 1968, no. 124; 
Bruno 1969, no. 171a; Gerhardus 1977, p. 86; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 895 



172 



75a 



75a. Plastic Dynamism: Horse + Houses 

Dinamismo plastico: cavallo + caseggiato 1913-14 

Oil on canvas 

15% X 39% in. (39 x 100.5 cm.) 
Signed top left: Boccioni 

Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo Reale, Milan 

B. Horse 

Cavallo 1913-14 

Watercolor on paper 
14% X 21% in. (37. IX 54.9 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Private collection 

c. Plastic Dynamism: "Horse + Houses }> 
Studio p er Cava Ilo + case 1913-14 

Ink on paper 

12%xl6%in. (32.7X42.2 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni; inscribed: dinamismo plastico 

CAVALLO + CASE 

Collection Mr. and Mrs. Eric Estorick 



174 



Horse + Rider + Houses 
Cavallo + cavaliere + caseggiato 
1913-14 

Oil on canvas 

41 3 /s X 53 Va in. (105 x 135 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna di Roma, 
Rome 

Study for "Horse + Rider + Houses" 
Studio per Cavallo + cavaliere + caseggiato 
1913-14 

Pencil and watercolor on paper 
15y4X22 3 /8Ìn. (38.7X56.8 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, 
Milan 



"A horse in movement," Boccioni wrote, "is 
not a stationary horse that moves but is a horse 
in movement, which is quite another thing 
and must be conceived and expressed as some- 
thing completely different. Objects in move- 
ment have to be conceived apart from the 
possibility of motion they possess. This means 
that we have to find a form that can express 
this new absolute, speed, to which no genu- 
ine modem temperament can be indifferent. 
We have to study the aspects life has taken on 
through speed and the simultaneity that re- 
sulta from it." 

He specified further that dynamic form 
"is a kind of fourth dimension in painting and 
sculpture, which cannot be perfectly alive 
without the complete affirmation of the three 
dimensions that determine the volume: height, 
width, depth." 

In Plastic Dynamism: Horse + Houses of 
1913-14 (no. 75a) Boccioni accentuated con- 
structive aspects and emphasized volumetrie 
components by using regular and geometric- 
al wedges of color. A narrow and exception- 
ally wide format plays its part in making the 
viewer see how the action unfurls and the plas- 
tic forms intermesh. Foreground and back- 



ground are united in a single view, rhythmi- 
cally cadenced by the pyramidal shapes in the 
upper part of the picture. 

Both the watercolor and the ink drawing 
of a horse (nos. 75b and 75c) can be consid- 
ered preparatory studies for the painting, not 
only because there is no rider but also because 
the structure of the image is built up on force- 
lines that are very much in evidence. Both 
studies, as it happens, have a greater impact 
than the painting itself: The forms appear bet- 
ter defmed and less confused, and in the ink 
drawing in particular, the contrast between 
white and black emphasizes the way in which 
the image of the horse in swift movement in- 
terlaces with the houses' static contours. The 
animal's body, composed of cutout fragments, 
is supplely articulated like a piece of metal 
machinery with sharp, cutting edges — it seems 
to cleave the air in its taut, knifelike onrush. 

In Horse + Rider + Houses (no. 75d) the 
forms that are so incisive in the Milan paint- 
ing (no. 75 a) seem to crumble away under a 
greater concern for color. The color, in fact, 
possesses the same constructive and analyti- 
cal force as in Cézanne, whose works Boccioni 
was studying attentively in the months that 
led up to his new rethinking of form. The 
contours are no longer so pronounced nor does 
a concern with plastic values preponderate. 
The composition is worked out in primarily 
pictorial and painterly terms: The ultramarine 
blue establishes a dimension of depth, while 
the dynamism of the shapes and forms seems 
to dissolve away in the fluidity of paint and 
color, with the result that virtually nothing is* 
left of the feeling of volume that character- 
ized the Milan painting. 

A study for the Rome painting has been 
identified on the basis of a general similarity 
of image as well as the presence of a rider 
(no. 75e). Here again the relationship between 
the various parts of the composition is much 
better defined and more concise than in the 
painting. Of particular note is the way in 
which the shapes of the houses push forward, 
forming a single plastic reality with the mass 
of the swiftly moving horse. 



175 



exhibitions: No. 75a — Rome 1959, no. 81; Milan 
1973-74, no. 185; Milan 1982-83, no. 129 

No. 75c — New York 1961, no. 57; Newcastle upon 
Tyne 1972, p. 26 

No. 75d— Rome 1914; Rome 1925, no. 3 (Cavallo, 
Cavaliere, Caseggiato); Venice 1950, p. 58, no. 5 
(Cavallo, cavaliere e caseggiato); Bologna 1951; Rome 
1953, no. 20 (Cavallo + Casa); Rome 1959, no. 79 
(ca. 1913); New York 1961, pp. 101, 144, no. 60 
(1914); Venice 1966, p. 13, no. 95 (1914); Dusseldorf 
1974, no. 15; Milan 1982-83, no. 128 (1914); Verona 
1985-86, no. 80 

No. 75e— New York 1961, no. 59, p. 100; Paris 

1973, no. 35; Milan 1973-74, no. 188; Dusseldorf 

1974, no. 94; Milan 1982-83, no. 125 



literature: No. 75a — Argan and Calvesi 1953, 
fig. 61, p. 30; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 374; 
De Grada 1962, pi. 19; Ballo 1964, no. 569; Martin 
1968, no. 197;Taylor 1968, p.82; Bruno 1969, 



no. 176a; Caramel and Pirovano 1973, no. 28, pi. 26; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 902 

No. 75b— Pacim 1977, fig. 11, p. 160; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 906 

No. 75c— - Balza 1915 (Dinamismo plastico [Cavallo 
+ case]); Taylor 1961b, no. 277 (1914); Argan and 
Calvesi 1953, p. 29; Mazzariol 1959, p. 14; Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 352; Ballo 1964, no. 572; 
Bruno 1969, no. 177d; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 907 

No. 75d — Argan and Calvesi 1953, pi. 60 (Cavallo 
+ Cavaliere + Case); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 343; De Grada 1962, no. 88 (1913); Ragghianti 
1962, p. 168, no. 395; Ballo 1964, no. 568 (1914); 
Martin 1968, no. 198 (1914); Bruno 1969, no. 174; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 908; Roche-Pézard 1983, 
no. 86, ili. 43 

No. 75e— Cahiers d'art 1950, p. 50 (ili.); Taylor 
1961 b, no. 275; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 350; 
Ballo 1964, no. 565; Bruno 1969, no. 176c; Birolli 
1971, p. 170; Calvesi 1973, no. 55; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 910 




178 



76 a. The Street Pavers 
I selciatori 1914 



Oil on canvas 

39 3 /8X39 3 / 8 in. (100 x 100 cm.) 

Signed bottoni left: UB 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

Studyfor "The Street Pavers": 
Man Laying Paving Stones 
Studio per 1 selciatori 1914 

Ink on paper 

5 3 /4X8V4Ìn. (14.6X21 cm.) 

Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

Studyfor u The Street Pavers": 

Two Workmen 
Studio per I selciatori 1914 

Ink on paper 

5 3 / 8 x8V8Ìn. (13.7 x 20.6 cm.) 

Signed bottoni right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



Ascribed to the year 1909 by Valsecchi (1950) 
and Carrieri (1950), to 1910 by De Grada 
(1962), and to 1911 by Taylor (1961) and Mar- 
tin (1968), the present painting is included 
among the works of 1914 in the monograph 
by Argan and Calvesi (1953), and that date is 
accepted by Ballo (1964), Bruno (1969), and 
Calvesi and Coen (1983). In support of her 
earlier date Martin argues: "While stili igno- 
rant of the actual appearance of Cubist paint- 
ing, Boccioni evolved here a highly intelligent 
combination of angular, transparent planes and 
a freely improvised color dynamism based on 
the Divisionism of the Città che sale. This time 
his interpretation of a working scene had no 
anecdotal overtones, but centered on a vari- 
ety of physical sensations which he sought 
to express." However, the style and form of 
this work make the later dating of 1914 more 
probable. 

Embittered by the polemics with his Fu- 
turist comrades after the publication of his 
book Pittura, scultura futuriste, Boccioni aban- 



doned here his exploration of dynamism in 
favor of a study in the decomposition of the 
image by means of color. Toward that end, he 
returned to a palette of strong hues juxtaposed 
but not superimposed and laid on with widely 
spaced brushstrokes that let the prepared 
ground of the canvas show through. 

Argan has written an acute assessment of 
this picture: "In Street Pavers Pointillism in the 
Seurat manner likewise disappears; the brush- 
strokes become sparser; the pictorial texture 
is torn to shreds; the foreshortenings are so 
rapid and abbreviated that the figures each be- 
come virtually a separate compact mass, are 
reduced to suggestions of motion, dissolve in 
the colored space, and are no longer anything 
but rotating shreds of color. In no work more 
than this are the two terms of the dilemma of 
vision versus expression so dose, so much on 
the verge of a synthesis, and the content newer, 
more fully invented, more full of the force of 
inspiration." 

Except for the area at the lower left laid 



179 




76a 



180 



76b 




76c 



on with long streaks of color, the entire space 
is crammed with shapes whose interconnec- 
tions are difficult to decipher. Apart from the 
kneeling figure at the lower right, the rest of 
the representation strikes the eye as a tangled 
mass of colors. 

The present studies are two of at least 
four that Boccioni made for The Street Pavers. 



exhibitions: No. 76a — Milan 1916-17, no. 10; 
Milan 1924, no. 13; New York 1949 (ili. pi. 1; 1910 
(?); Collection Romeo Toninelli, Milan); New York 
1961, no. 31, p. 44 (1911); New York 1973-74, no. 
27 (ili: ca. 1911); Dusseldorf 1974, no. 92; Philadel- 



phia 1980-81, no. 38 (ca. 1911); New Haven 1983, 
no. 18, pi. 3(1911) 

No. 76b— New York 1973-74, no. 201; New Haven 
1983, no. 19, p. 84 (1911) 

literature: No. 76a — Carrieri 1950, pi. 16, p. 
16, p. 45 (1909?); Valsecchi 1950 (1909?); Argan and 
Calvesi 1953, fig. 20, p. 34; Archivi del Futurismo 
1962, no. 197 (signed lower right "UB"); De Grada 
1962, pi. 9 (1910); Ballo 1964, no. 580; Martin 1968, 
no. 73; Bruno 1969, no. 178a; Tisdall and Bozzolla 
1977, no. 85; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 911 

No. 76b— Taylor 1961b, no. 180 (1911); Ballo 1964, 
no. 326 (1910); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 914 

No. 76c— Taylor 1961b, no. 179 (1911); Ballo 1964, 
no. 327 (1910); Birolli 1971, p. 232; Calvesi 1973, 
no. 57; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 915 



181 



77. Dynamism of a Man's Head 
Dinamismo di una testa d'uomo 1914 

Pendi, ink, tempera, and collage on canvas 
121/4 X12VÌ in. (31X31 cm.) 
Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, 
Palazzo Reale, Milan 

Because of stylistic similarities with The 
Drinker (no. 78), this mixed-medium work 
can be assigned to 1914 when Boccioni re- 
turned to a Picasso-like approach in which the 
image was defined through its volumes. This 
new path led him to reconsider his system of 
formai values according to the principles 
exemplified in Cézanne's works. 

In the summer of 1914 Boccioni wrote 
to Emilio Cecchi, a man of letters, about his 
new aesthetic direction: "I am ever more con- 
vinced of the inevitability of conceiving the 
world plastically as continuity. I see it as a log- 
icai (mathematically logicai) extension and de- 
velopment of the plastic conceptions of the 
past. Unfortunately the task appears to me 
ever more grave. I feel I am a little too alone 

78. The Drinker 

Il bevitore 1914 

Oil on canvas 

33% x 34% in. (86x87 cm.) 

Signed bottom left: U. Boccioni 

Pinacoteca di Brera (Collection Jucker), Milan 

This is a diffìcult work, one that reflects study 
and preparation for a new working phase. The 
dynamic thrust expressed in previous paint- 
ings is transformed into a more static image; 
the sense of continuity is entrusted to the se- 
quence of planes and to the perspective. Plas- 
ticity is achieved by color, playing on variations 
of yellow, which changes and takes on tones 
of brown, heightened by the red of the hat 
and the green of the bottle. 

The compositional sensibility of Cézanne 
provided the new point of departure for 
Boccioni. The figure in the present painting 
could be a reinterpretation of one of Cézanne's 



in this . . . and the disbelief and indifference 
[of others] leave me perplexed. At times I no 
longer understand the why and wherefore of 
the battle to be fought." 

In this work Boccioni delves deep into 
an analysis of the image's linear structure. The 
face is placed into the rather unusual square 
format through a calculated network of pro- 
portions and viewpoints. The space is con- 
structed around the triangular head, which 
divides the canvas into three areas, with the 
centrai part emphasized. The debt to Picasso 
is explicit, particularly in technique. 

EXHIBITIONS: Rome 1959, no. 82 (Scomposizione 
d'una testa d'uomo); New York 1961, p. 144, no. 63; 
Venice 1966, p. 13, no. 97; Rome 1968-69, no. 4 
(Scomposizione di una testa); Paris 1973, no. 36; Milan 
1973-74, no. 183; Dusseldorf 1974, no. 11; Milan 
1982-83, no. 133; Verona 1985-86, no. 81 

literature: Nicodemi and Bezzola 1939, no. 2309; 
Pastonchi 1950, p. 33 (Dynamisme d'une the de /emme, 
1912); Argan and Calvesi 1953, pi. 64; Carrieri 1961, 
no. 22; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 390 (Scom- 
posizione di una testa); Ballo 1964, cover, no. 577; Mar- 
tin 1968, no. 204; Bruno 1969, no. 180; Caramel and 
Pirovano 1973, p. 15, no. 30; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 918 



cardplayers, employing a more formai and 
sculptural approach. A feeling of melancholy 
monumentalism pervades the painting, under- 
scored by the drinker 's lowered head. 

A gouache on paper (Collection Lydia 
Winston Malbin, New York) treats this same 
subject. The composition is less compact than 
in the oil; there are larger diminishing planes 
and less of a tendency to dwell on the formai 
elements. 

exhibitions: Milan 1916-17, no. 12; Rome 1953, 
no. 24; New York 1954, no. 16; Rome 1955, p. 55, 
no. 3; New York 1961, no. 118; Hamburg 1963, 
no. 29; Venice 1966, p. 13, no. 100; Dusseldorf 1974, 
no. 88; Verona 1985-86, no. 82; Venice 1986, p. 137 

literature: Marinetti 1927, n.p. (ili.); Benet 1949, 
no. 51 (El Bebedor, 1909); Carrieri 1950, p. 71; 
Pastonchi 1950, p. 43; Argan and Calvesi 1953, cover, 
pi. 66; Castelfranco and Valsecchi 1956, p. 72, pi. 7; 
Calvesi 1958a, p. 166; Carrieri 1961, pi. 39; Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 383; De Grada 1962, no. 94; 
Ballo 1964, no. 575; Calvesi 1967, p. 69; Magagnato 
1967, p. 95; Bruno 1969, no. 181a; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 920 



182 




185 



79. Under the Trellis in Naples 

Sotto la pergola a Napoli 1914 

Oil and collage on canvas 
33V8X33Ì/8ÌI1. (84x84 cm.) 
Signed bottoni left: U. Boccioni 
Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, 
Palazzo Reale, Milan 



This work is one of those that reflect Boccioni's 
new interest in three-dimensional rendering. 
The paint is used more transparently than in 
The Drinker (no. 78), in part to convey more 
effectively the relation of each piane to the 
others. The colors tend to bright, even shrill 
tonalities, as in the strong yellow of the fore- 
ground figure. Although he is interested here 
in the decomposition of the image, Boccioni 
did not disown his earlier theories; he contin- 
ued to explore the concept of compenetration 
which he had defined as "an intersection of 
lines and volumes of infinite varieties of thick- 
ness, weight, transparency, which in their turn 
vary the chromatic tone, that is, the simulta- 
neous product of the pure complementary 
colors." 



In this 1914 work Boccioni summed up 
the ideas propounded in his Pittura, scultura 
futuriste, published earlier that year. The rhythm 
of the composition is broken up by the lines 
forming the various objects, thus negating the 
three-dimensional aspect suggested by the 
painting's profusion of curves. 



exhibitions: Milan 1916-17, no. 1 1 (Sotto il pergolato 
a Napoli); Geneva 1920-21, no. 19 (Sotto il pergolato a 
Napoli); Milan 1924, no. 16 (Sotto il pergolato); Milan 
1927, no. 9 (Pergolato); Vemce 1950, p. 59, no. 15 
(Sotto il pergolato a Napoli); Rome 1953, no. 22; Blois 
1959, p. 24, no. 8; Venice 1966, p. 13, no. 101 (Sotto 
il pergolato a Napoli); Milan 1973-74, no. 181 (Per- 
gola a Napoli); Milan 1982-83, no. 135 (Sotto la per- 
gola a Napoli or Sotto il pergolato a Napoli); Verona 
1985-86, no. 83 

literature: Nicodemi and Bezzola 1939, no. 2301; 
Carrieri 1950, p. 71 (Sotto il pergolato a Napoli); 
Pastonchi 1950, p. 42; Valsecchi 1950 (Sotto il pergolato 
a Napoli); Argan and Calvesi 1953, pi. 65; Calvesi 
1958a, p. 166; Carrieri 1961, pi. 42; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 378 (Sotto il pergolato a Napoli); 
De Grada 1962, pi. 20 (Sotto il pergolato a Napoli); 
Ballo 1964, no. 581; Calvesi 1967, p. 354; Magagnato 
1967, p. 94; Martin 1968, no. 206; Bruno 1969, no. 
182; Birolli 1971 , p. 172; Caramel and Pirovano 1973, 
p. 15, no. 31; Birolli 1983, no. 35; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 922; Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 95, ili. 51 



80a. The Two Friends 

Le due amiche 1914-15 

Oil on canvas 

79i/2 X59 5 /s in. (202X 151.5 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Assitalia — Le Assicurazioni d'Italia, Rome 



B. Interior with Two Temale Figures 
Interno con due figure femminili 1915 

Watercolor, tempera, ink, and pencil on 

cardboard 
25% x 18% in. (65.7X47.9 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sfoi 

Milan 



The present canvas is often considered a dou- 
blé portrait of Boccioni's mother and sister, 
but this painting in fact depicts two of the 
artist's friends — Luisa Hammerschlag Ruberl 
and Betsy Baer. The two women, who were 
sisters-in-law, belonged to the cultured and 
enlightened German upper middle class; they 
lived in Milan because their families had com- 
mercial interests there. Betsy was a cousin of 
the artist's friend Vico Baer who for many 
years stood by him and extended fmancial help 
as well. Since the two families are known to 
have moved back to Germany at the begin- 
ning of 1915, the date of 1916 proposed by 
Ballo and Bruno is obviously incorrect. 

The likelihood that the painting was ex- 
ecuted in Boccioni's studio in Milan is borne 
out by the presence in the background, in the 



186 




80a 



center and behind the seated woman's head, 
of two of his sculptures in plaster. Although 
the forms are only roughly indicated, the one 
to the fbre with its flattened shape can be iden- 
tified as Empty and Full Abstracts of a Head and 
the other with its staggered spirai as Force- 
Forms of a Botti e. 

At this point in his career Boccioni was 
turning his attention once again to chromatic 
decomposition and luminous refraction; he did 
so with the same deep commitment that he 
had had in the years before he became preoc- 
cupied with the idea of dynamic tensions. In- 
sofar as the present work returns to the 
Divisionist approach, it can be thought of as 
a link between his pre-Futurist and his final 
phase. The color, which has a vitalistic, joyous 
explosiveness, is treated in a manner that re- 
calls The Three Women (no. 41) of 1909. Light 
again becomes the prime mover of the entire 
representation, the factor that unifies objects 
and figures in a single vision. In this new phase 
concern with color was again one of Boccioni's 
chief interests, and his last works show his 
further development toward control of the vol- 
umetrie and constructive aspeets that began 
to take on importance for him again begin- 
ning in 1914. 

Interior with Two F emale Figures has much 
in common with The Two Friends: the same 
vertical format and the same composition with 
an older woman seated in the foreground 
— here probably Boccioni's mother — and the 
other woman standing behind her at the left. 
Yet the image is realized in an entirely differ- 
ent manner. In Interior planes are tilted and 
even distorted; the figure of the older woman 
projeets forward while the standing figure 
seems pulled into the background, as if being 
swallowed by a force that deforms ali the other 
elements and falsifies the relationship between 
indoors and outdoors. 

"Rendering the atmosphere in place of 
the figure," Boccioni had written, "means 
conceiving bodies not as isolated in space 
but as more or less compact nuclei of one and 
the same reality, because one needs to keep in 
mind that the distances between one object 



and another are not empty spaces but con- 
tinuities of matter which differ only in in- 
tensity and which we reveal with forms or 
directions that correspond to neither photo- 
graphic truth nor cool analytical reality, since 
those must always remain traditional experi- 
ences." Here then, in this image realized in a 
period of complete transition, he had not yet 
abandoned his experimentation with com- 
penetration of planes and with simultaneity. 



exhibitions: No. 80a — Milan 1916-17, no. 77 
(ili.: Le due amiche; listed as Le amiche, 1914); Rome 
1987, p. 19 

No. 80b— NewcastleuponTyne 1972, p. 28; Milan 
1973-74, no. 225; Milan 1982-83, no. 140 

literature: No. 80a— Sarfatti 1917, p. 43 (ili.); 
Costantini 1933, p. 129; Argan and Calvesi 1953, 
fig. 67, p. 36 (Collection Ruberl, Frankfurt); Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 336 (Civica Galleria d'Arte 
Moderna, Milan); Ballo 1964, no. 596, p. 386 (1916); 
Bruno 1969, no. 190 (Interno con la sorella e la madre 
[Le due amiche], 1916); Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 923 

No. 80b— Argan and Calvesi 1953, fig. 68, p. 32; 
Taylor 1961b, no. 292; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 394; Ballo 1964, no. 594; Bruno 1969, no. 189; 
Birolli 1971, p. 213; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 937 



188 



8 1 . Lancers } Charge 

Carica di lancieri 1914-1915 



Tempera and collage on cardboard 

12 5 /s x 19 3 / 4 in. (32. 1 x 50.2 cm.) 

Pinacoteca di Brera (Collection Jucker), Milan 



The collage was probably executed in late 1914 
and early 1915. The newspaper clipping in the 
upper right corner bears the date January 4, 
and the work was published for the first time 
in January 1915 in the magazine La Grande 
Illustrazione. Aroused by the outbreak of World 
War I, Boccioni joined Marinetti in organiz- 
ing demonstrations urging Italian action 
against Austria; in September 1914 they had 
been arrested for burning Austrian flags on 
the stage of the Teatro dal Verme in Milan. 
During these months Boccioni largely aban- 
doned artistic activity and devoted himself pri- 
marily to politics: "I want to work but the 
anxiety that grips everybody perhaps prevents 
me. ... I should go to the country but . . . and 
the war?" (letter, September 22, 1914). 

In early 1915 other Futurists, among them 
Severini and Carrà, also chose to paint scenes 
influenced by the climate of war, and they im- 
bued these bellicose images with extreme emo- 
tional tension. 

In the present work Boccioni again uses 
dynamic thrusts, which are, however, less re- 
solved in the spatial involvement of plastic vol- 
umes. The composition is based on diagonal 



elements, and the force-lines are discharged 
on the painting's left side. The horse in the 
foreground is echoed by numerous others, 
which form a compact but indistinct swarm. 
The lances of the horsemen are intersected by 
bayonets and by the gunfire of the soldiers 
hidden in the trenches at the bottom left. The 
sense of drama is communicated by the ab- 
sence of sharp coloristic notes and by the 
repetition of metallic grays, harsh as the ty- 
pographical characters that act as foundation 
to the scene. The insistent rhythm and vio- 
lent action of the cavalry culminate in the horse 
plunging toward the decisive clash. 



exhibitions: New York 1949 (ili. pi. 15; Collection 
Adriano Pallini, Milan); New York 1954, pi. 17; New 
York 1961, no. 66, p. 114; Newcastle upon Tyne, 
1972, p. 20; Paris 1973, no. 37; Milan 1973-74, 
no. 224; Milan 1982-83, no. 136; Venice 1986, p. 138 

literature: Cahiers d'art 1950, p. 46 (ili); Argan 
and Calvesi 1953, p. 33; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 391; Rosenblum 1962, no. 132, pp. 188, 192; Ballo 
1964, no. 582; Martin 1968, no. 214; Bruno 1969, 
no. 183; Birolli 1971, p. 319; Tisdall and Bozzolla 1977, 
no. 147, p. 180; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 925; 
Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 98, ili. 51 



82. Study of a Nude 

Studio di nudo 1915 

Ink and ink wash on paper 

9 5 /s X 1 2 Vs in. (24. 4 x 30. 8 cm. ) 

Signed lower right: Boccioni 

Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco, Milan 



For some months in 1915 Boccioni went 
through a short-lived neo-Cubist phase dur- 
ing which he showed renewed engagement in 



figuration. This nude figure demonstrates the 
artist's revived interest in sculpture and in a 
formai exploration using a syntax that recalls 



190 




81 



191 



82 



Picasso's very personal language. To this tense 
schematic rendering, he brought a profbund 
expressi veness, at once soft and penetrating 
and thus very much the product of the draw- 
ing technique itself The nude body is force- 
fully rendered, thrust forward in a direct, 
almost harsh way. 

Here Boccioni is seen transforming his 
concept of space: The dynamic impulse has 
been modified by a constructive, synthetic 
approach in which the subject as such re- 
sumes the importance it had in his earlier 



works. There is nothing cold or mechanical 
about this composition; its lines vibrate with 
an emotional sensitivity that is technically 
rooted in the different ways in which the ink 
has been used. 



exhibition: Milan 1982-83, no. 138 

literature: Taylor 1961b, no. 288; Archivi 
del Futurismo 1962, no. 312; De Grada 1962, no. 97; 
Ballo 1964, no. 584; Calvesi 1973, no. 59; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 927 



192 



83 a. Plastic Synthesis of a Seated Figure ( Silvia) 

Sintesi plastica di figura seduta (Silvia) 1915 



Oil on canvas 

33 Va X 25 Vi in. (84x64cm.) 

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna di Roma, Rome 

B. Silvia 1915 
Ink on paper 

25 3 / 8 Xl8 5 /8Ìn. (64.5 X 47.3 cm.) 

Signed top right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

Seven months after the artist's death the pres- 
ent painting was discussed by Margherita 
Sarfatti in the March- Aprii 1917 issue of the 
re vie w Vita d'Arte: "Here we are already well 
beyond the more or less curious and interest- 
ing tentatives; we have got over the more or 
less successful experiments in pictorial chem- 
istry. Look at that face stripped down to two 
traits and a few essential planes; at the three 
large folds in the garment which eliminate yet 
none the less imply ali those hundred and 
forty-three folds, pleats, and pleatlets of the 
real dress that a big little man like Meissonier 
and the mob of yulgar painters of yesterday 
and today would have worn themselves out 
rendering in the greatest possible number, 
some more, some less, each according to his 
degree of ability and conscientiousness but cer- 
tainly not in accord with that severe concept 
of choice customarily designated under the 
name of 'style. ' Here on the contrary, for any- 
one who knows how to look, not a line smacks 
of whim or chance. Not one could be altered 
or shifted without throwing the economy and 
harmony of the entire work of art off bai- 
ance. In the same way in Greek tragedy not a 
phrase or word of the dialogue can be changed 
or suppressed with impunity and without 
damage. Here we are beyond anything handed 
down and arbitrary: We are already in the 
realm of necessity. And the [lesser] painter's 
skillfulness, that puerile little facility with its 
air of saying: Look at me, how good I am! 
— here they no longer exist. They decamp be- 
fore the austerity of expression brought up 



from the depths and delved into with ali the 
artist's altruistic passion for art, with ali the 
fervor of idealism of which his soul is capa- 
ble and ali the experience of how to do things 
that he acquired during long years of labor." 

Along with a reproduction of the paint- 
ing, Sarfatti's arride included illustrations of 
two watercolors she identified as first and sec- 
ond studies for the Plastic Synthesis of a Seated 
Woman (her title). She would return to the 
painting in an arride in the newspaper i7 Popolo 
d'Italia on March 14, 1924 (in 1924 the canvas 
was acquired by the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte 
Moderna of Rome from Signor Emanuele 
Castelbarco). There she held it up as the most 
complete example of Boccioni's return to 
figuration: "The Figure of a Seated Woman an- 
ticipates with masterly audacity certain im- 
portant endeavors rendered popular by the 
most modem French painting. The so-called 
'dynamism,' that is, the extremist and roman- 
tic residue of the most advanced Impression*- 
ism, is completely abandoned here. . . . The 
cairn femmine figure posed in an armchair is 
already a sign of prudent approaches to a re- 
newal no longer external and sensational but 
profound and intimate, where that note of 
expression and human feeling that Boccioni 
had the merit of never forgetting is no longer 
a convulsive cry and alarming mimicry (as in 
the unbalanced Mourning) but is a reflective 
spontaneity of gesture and smile. It is an 
instinctive and at the same rime fully con- 
scious choice that is on the way to defming 
itself as a style." 



193 



The present image has much in common 
with the portrait of his wife with a fan that 
Cézanne painted in 1886-88, a work Bocccioni 
must have seen in 1912 when he and Severini 
visited the Steins on the rue de Fleurus in Paris 
(it then belonged to Gertrude and Leo Stein 
and she kept it when her brother moved to 
Tuscany). The similarity lies not only in the 
figure's position but also in the choice of a 
palette that Boccioni seems to have instinc- 
tively taken from his source. Cézanne's reds 
and blues are used here but broken up in a 
way that conveys a feeling of chiaroscuro and 
some impression of volume. In general pian 
the two pictures are quite similar, although 
Boccioni's Silvia faces in the opposite direc- 
tion. The light source also differs: In Boccioni's 
portrait it appears to come from outside; in 
Cézanne's, it seems internai to the work it- 
self. In this final phase of Boccioni's activity 
Cézanne became his paragon, touchstone, ul- 
timate measure. What he learned about form 
from studying that great master 's work in- 
duced him to reconsider the relationship be- 



tween volume and. color and to reexamine the 
use of light in the Post-Impressionist tradition. 

In the study for Plastic Synthesis of a Seated 
Figure there is greater emphasis on firm line- 
work to defme the figure's contours. The rapid 
diagonal brushstrokes modulate the accents of 
chiaroscuro and construct an image with some- 
thing of the same severity one senses in the 
woman's expression. 



exhibitions: No. 83a — Milan 1916-17 (ili. : Sintesi 
plastica di figura seduta; title not included in exhibition 
list; no. 237, Figura di donna seduta [?]); Geneva 
1920-21, no. 18; Milan 1924, no. 12 (Donna seduta 
[Sintesi plastica]) 

literature: No. 83a— Sarfatti 1917, p. 47 (ili.); 
Luzzatto 1924; Sarfatti 1924; Argan and Calvesi 1953, 
no. 70, p. 29; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 388; 
De Grada 1962, pi. 21; Ballo 1964, no. 588, p. 372; 
Bruno 1969, no. 186; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 928 

No. 83b — Sarfatti 1917, p. 46 (ili. : Secondo studio 
per "Sintesi plastica di una donna seduta'); Taylor 1961b, 
no. 293; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 392; Ballo 
1964, no. 592, p. 372; Bruno 1969, no. 185b; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 930 



84a. Head of the Artisti Mother 
La madre 1915 

Pencil, ink, and watercolor on paper 
VXUxWikl. (31.1 X24.1cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

B. The Artist's Mother 
La madre 1915 

Charcoal and watercolor on paper 

25% X 20 7 /sin. (65.1 X 53 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

These portraits display a strong feeling for vol- 
umes. One, however, is based on curving lines 
and is very much more schematic, while the 



other does more to bring out the volumes of 
the features. The broken linework in the sec- 
ond drawing creates a more dynamic and mon- 
umentai impact recalling the hand of Cézanne. 
When Boccioni attacked the Cubists for their 
overly static approach, he accused them of 
misinterpreting Cézanne's aesthetic conception: 
"Instead of setting fixed limits to objects, as 
artists did before Impressionism, the objects 
must be interpreted in their reciprocai formai 
influences, in the gravitation of the masses, in 
the direction of the forces. The Cubists con- 
struct a definitive by interpreting Cézanne's 
teachings in a negative sense. Interpreted thus, 
Cézanne becomes the source of a definitive 
position which is a dead stop, if not a step 
backward. There was in Cézanne the danger 
found in ali intellectual artists: a gap open to 
tradition. In Cézanne we have continuai clas- 



196 



84b 



sical overtures of the museum. Seduced by 
this, the Cubists have exaggerated Cézanne's 
famous advice to return to the cube, the sphere, 
the cylinder. They have taken literally 
Cézanne's statement, 'Il faut faire le musée 
devant la nature, ' and thus have forgotten na- 
ture and turned out museum pieces. They have 
exaggerated Cézanne's coloring and, despis- 
ing Impressionist chromaticism, have empha- 
sized pure chiaroscuro, seasoning it with 
French grays and cold tones." 

Even in this late phase of great spiritual 
crisis and return to traditional formai values, 
Boccioni did not abandon his theories of the 
dynamism of the image. For ali its emphasis 
on volumetrie decomposition, heightened by 
unexpected touches of color dashed in with 



watercolor, the second drawing does in fact es- 
cape the static inertness Boccioni criticized in 
the Cubists. 



exhibitions: No. 84a — New York 1961, no. 61, 
p. 100 (1914); New York 1973-74, no. 228; Philadel- 
phia 1980-81, no. 52; New Haven 1983, no. 29, p. 46 
(1914) 

No. 84b— Philadelphia 1980-81, no. 53; New 
Haven 1983, no. 37, pi. 5 

literature: No. 84a— Taylor 1961b, no. 278 
(1914); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 277; Ballo 
1964, no. 587; Bruno 1969, no. 187b; Calvesi 1973, 
no. 62; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 932 

No. 84b— Taylor 1961b, no. 295 (1915-16); 
Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 270; Ballo 1964, 
no. 590; Calvesi 1973, no. 61; Calvesi and Coen 
1983, no. 936 



197 



Ferruccio Busoni 

Ritratto del Maestro Ferruccio Busoni 1916 
Oil on canvas 

69VÌX47 Vi in. (176 x 120 citi.) 

Signed and dated bottoni right: Boccioni 1916 

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna di Roma, Rome 



By 1912 Boccioni was in touch with the com- 
poser Ferruccio Busoni, one of the first to buy 
his paintings (during the first European tour 
of Futurist exhibitions he bought The City 
Rises in London). In 1916 Boccioni was in- 
vited by the marchese and marchesa di Casa- 
nova to their villa in Pallanza on Lake Mag- 
giore. It was here that he painted this portrait. 

On Jury 15 Boccioni confided to his friend 
Vico Baer: 'Tve written an insistent letter to 
Busoni. He stili owes me the whole sum for 
the portrait. " There are references in other let- 
ters to this problem. After his stay in Pallanza 
Busoni went to Switzerland; on July 26 he 
wrote to Boccioni from Zurich: "For the mo- 
ment I'm sending 2,000 Fr. toward the por- 
trait to the Milan address." 

This late work shows how the artist's in- 
terests were turning toward a formalism sus- 
tained chiefly by color; here he attacks the 
canvas with a chromatic violence that is ex- 



pressed in thick impasto. The structuring of 
the image through a rhythmic geometrization 
and the blue and green palette show the strong 
influence of Cézanne. The same compositional 
and chromatic elements recur in the other 
works painted by Boccioni during his stay at 
Pallanza. He was soon after assigned to the 
field artillery, and these were the last works 
before his death. 



exhibitions: Milan 1916-17, no. 76 (Grande ritratto 
del Maestro Busoni); Milan 1933; Winterthur 1959, 
no. 27; Milan 1982-83, no. 143 

literature: Se verini 1933, p. 358; Costantini 1934, 
p. 197; Carrà 1945, n.p. (ili.); Benet 1949, no. 53; 
Sironi and Zervos 1950, p. 15; Argan and Calvesi 
1953, fig. 80, p. 29; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 402; De Grada 1962, pi. 24; Ballo 1964, no. 604, 
pp. 386-87; Martin 1968, no. 219; Bruno 1969, 
no. 198a; Tisdall and Bozzolla 1977, no. 87; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 946; Roche-Pézard 1983, no. 99, 
ili. 52; Crispolti 1986, p. 21 



198 




85 



Umberto Boccioni and Head + House + Light (Testa + Casa + Luce; \> 
later destroyed), 1912. Photo: Electa Editrice, Milan 



SCULPTURE, ETCHINGS, AND CARTOONS 





Umberto Boccioni, Head + House + Light (Testa 
+ casa + luce), 1912 (later destroyed). Photo: Arte 
Fotografica, Rome. Courtesy Giuseppe Sprovieri 



Umberto Boccioni, Fusion ofa Head arida Window 
(Fusione di una testa e di una finestra), ca. 1912 
(later destroyed). Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan. Cour- 
tesy Angelo Calmarini, Milan 




Umberto Boccioni, Force-Forms of a Botile (Forme- 
forza di una bottiglia), 1913 (later destroyed). 
Photo: Arte Fotografica, Rome. Courtesy 
Giuseppe Sprovieri 



Umberto Boccioni, Muscles in Movement (Muscoli 
in velocità), 1913 (later destroyed). Photo: Arte 
Fotografica, Rome. Courtesy Giuseppe Sprovieri 



Boccioni as Sculptor 



The Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, signed by Umberto Boccioni alone, was published on 
Aprii 11, 1912. It is unlikely he had yet tried his hand at sculpture in any material way, 
making his discussion purely theoretical. In point of fact, on the date in question he was stili 
in Berlin; on Aprii 13 he wrote to his friend Barbantini: "I have been in Berlin for some days 
now and am about to finish my . . . international tournée. " Since February Boccioni had been 
traveling around Europe, from Paris to Berlin and London, then again to Berlin and Paris, 
to organize together with Marinetti the various stages of the traveling show of Futurist 
paintings. Nor can it be supposed that in the months preceding the Paris show he had found 
time to experiment with sculpture, since he was entirely taken up with preparing his canvases 
for the Futurist debut on the international scene. 

On March 15, however, he wrote to his friend Vico Baer that he was "obsessed by 
sculpture" and had beheld "a complete renewal of that mummified art." He was then in 
Paris and in contact with artists who, particularly at that moment, were deeply involved in 
revivifying the traditional forms of sculpture, most notably Duchamp-Villon, Archipenko, 
and Picasso. 

It was only some months after publishing his manifesto that Boccioni confided to 
Severini in a letter datable to November 1912: "I am hard at work but don't finish anything, 
it seems to me. That is, I hope that what I am doing signifies something because I don't 
understand what I am doing. It is strange and it is terrible, but I am cairn. Today I worked 
six hours in a row on the sculpture and do not understand the result. . . . Planes upon planes, 
cross-sections of muscles, of a face, and what then? And the overall effect? Does what I am 
creating come to life? Where am I going to end up? Can I ask enthusiasm and comprehen- 
sion from others when I ask myself just what is the emotion that arises out of what I am 
doing? It suffices that there will al way s be a revolver. . . and yet I am utterly cairn." 

And again a few days later: ''What we have to do is enormous; the commitment 
required is terrible, and the plastic means appear and vanish in the very moment of realiza- 
tion. It is terrible. I don't know what to say, don't know what to do. 

"I do not understand anything anymore. . . . 

"And then I am struggling with sculpture: I work work work and don't know what 
I am producing. 

"Is it interior? Exterior? Is it sensation? Is it delirium? Is it mere brain? Analysis? 
Synthesis? What the hell it is I simply do not know! Forms on forms . . . confusion 



203 



"The Cubists are wrong. . . . Picasso is wrong. The academics are wrong. ... I no 
longer know what life I should be leading. ... I tremble! At the same rime cairn myself. . . . 
If I should have to go on in this key I could only kill myself. Certainly life is becoming an 
unbearable torment to me." 

On January 11, 1913, Boccioni opened his heart once more to Severini: "Do you 
continue to consider your sojourn in Paris definitive or are you uncertain? What are you 
working on? I buckled down to work in a feverish manner after the last visit to Paris. But 
I am not satisfied. We Italians have terrible difficulties. My book has been finished since 
December 1. ... I have painted, sculpted, and written day and night. . . . Now I am re- 
copying and retouching. I don't even have women anymore! Nothing! Live utterly chastely . . . 
for how long?" 

Only after his exhibition at Galene La Boétie in Paris (June-July 1913) was 
opened did the artist regain a little of the confidence he seems to have lost during the 
months of grinding labor. It was in a rather different tone that he wrote Vico Baer: "Yesterday, 
inauguration. Very many people and just as much imbecility. Sheer quantity of work dumb- 
founds artists friends and enemies. Sculpture is very much less intellectual than painting. 
Rarely does one find someone who can speak about it with competence. In everyone there 
is sheer amazement at the quantity of work and audacity. Apollinaire, completely won over 
again, is stili with me. He wants me to put various things into bronze as soon as I am back 
in Milan. He says there is no one but me in modem sculpture. He has said that some of my 
works are genuine historical documents that must be preserved. 

"He has turned out a little arride for L'Intransigeant, but today is going back to 
producing a serious study. He will give lectures in Italy. 

"He likewise feels a strange amazement at the intensity the force the violence of this 
latest manifestation of mine ... a true bayonet attack. 

"Guillaume Apollinaire is completely won over to Futurism and soon we shall see 
the fruits. He has done a lecture tour in Germany, and the influence and celebrity of our 
painting, he says, is extraordinary. Yesterday evening we had dinner, he, I, and Marinetti, in 
a famous restaurant on the Rive Gauche. We talked from seven until three in the morning. 
We carne out drunk and exhausted. After these discussions, which are true conquests by 
magnetism, I end up sad and discouraged. I think about what I would have done by now if I 
had grown up with Paris or Berlin as my environment. ... I would certainly not find myself 
in the miserable conditions that Italy leaves me in if from time to rime I did not make 
breakneck leaps that let me go forward! . . . 

"Paris this time doesn't overwhelm me. I feel I have entered into it with a domain of 
my own and am treated as an equal. 

"I am homesick for Milan, for my studio . . . but to what solitude must I return. 
Enough! Forward! 

"Ali Cubism seems to be stuck where it is. The painting moves little and is certainly 
not on the track of a fundamental revolution in sensibility. Archipenko's sculpture has fallen 
into archaism and the barbarie. There is an error in aim. Our primitivism should be entirely 
without analogy to that of the ancients. Ours is the farthest point reached in a complexity; 
the ancient is the mere stammering of a simplicity" 

These letters show the troubled, even anguished path that led Boccioni to sculpture. 



204 



The visit to Paris at the beginning of 1912 seems to have struck the first spark that would 
lead him to ponder the question of plastic form. This is further confirmed in Severini's 
autobiography, which tells of Boccioni's short visit to Paris in Aprii 1912: "Before heading 
back to Milan, and after his visits to Berlin and Brussels where we had had our exhibitions, 
Boccioni spent a few more days in Paris, revealing during that time a very great interest in 
sculpture. Every day and at every moment there were discussions or conversations on that 
subject. To indulge him in his desire to delve deeper into the problem of sculpture I took 
him to see Archipenko, Agéro, Brancusi, and also Duchamp-Villon, who were at that point 
the boldest avant-garde sculptors. . . . After that good period, perhaps the last good period 
in our friendship, Boccioni went back to Milan and, after scarcely fifteen days, the Manifesto 
of Futurist Sculpture was issued, about five months after the exhibition of painting. In the 
course of our discussions and our visits to the Parisian sculptors Boccioni had never let slip 
an allusion to that manifesto, and so I was surprised and saddened because I understood that 
with these 'speed records,' this feverish quest after the new for its own sake, and this lack of 
frankness, our friendship would suffer much." 

Thus the new manifesto must have been jotted down in the very first days after 
Boccioni's return to Milan. Even if written ali at one sitting, as would appear from extant 
documents, the text contains a number of general reflections on art very much along the 
same lines as those in the preceding proclamations. The art of the past — in particular, 
Egyptian and Greek forms and Michelangelo's grandiosity — is condemned even more vio- 
lently. Such expressions, Boccioni writes, are a "monstrous anachronism" with respect to 
the mercurial rhythms of modem times: "Sculpture has not progressed because of the very 
limited field allotted to it by the academic concept of the nude. An art that has to undress 
a man or woman to the buff in order even to begin to act on our feelings is a dead art! 
Painting, however, has been given a transfusion of fresh blood, has deepened and broadened 
itself by letting the landscape and surroundings act simultaneously on the human figure or 
on objects, arriving by those means at our Futurist compenetration of planes (Technical Mani- 
festo of Futurist Painting, Aprii 11, 1910). Sculpture likewise will fmd a new fountainhead of 
emotion, and therefore of style, but only when it extends its plasticity to what our barba- 
rous primitiveness has made us consider, up to our day, as subdivided, impalpable, and 
consequently not expressible through three-dimensional means." 

To renew itself sculpture must avail itself of new means, new materials: "That new 
plastic art will therefore involve translating the atmospheric planes that link and intersect 
things into plaster, bronze, glass, wood, and any other material one may wish. This vision, 
which I have called physical transcendentalism (lecture on Futurist painting at the Circolo 
Artistico in Rome, May 1911), is capable of rendering in three-dimensional forms the 
attractions and mysterious affinities that give form to the planes of the objects represented." 

As he had previously stated about painting, Boccioni insisted that the renewal of 
sculpture must arise out of the intimate relationship between the figure and its environ- 
ment. The whole notion of a closed form with value in itself must be removed from con- 
sideration, since the existence of any object is entirely bound up with the space in which 
it is found: "Sculpture must therefore make objects come to life by rendering their prolon- 
gation into space perceivable, systematic, and three-dimensional: No one can stili doubt that 
one object leaves off where another begins and that there is nothing that surrounds our own 



205 



body — bottle, automobile, house, tree, Street — that does not cut through it and slice it into 
cross-sections with an arabesque of curves and straight lines." 

The sole sculptor of genius in the contemporary age, said Boccioni, is Medardo 
Rosso (1858-1928) because of his attempt to renew traditional form by modeling impres- 
sionistically in wax rather than by striving for solid forms; he thereby sought to "open a 
vaster field to sculpture by rendering in three-dimensional art the influence of an environ- 
ment and the atmospheric links that bind it to the subject." Yet even Rosso's efforts have 
their limit because the figure is stili conceived "as a world in itself. " 

If, by modeling the subject in wax so as to render it more sensitive to the play of 
light, Rosso shattered the concept of a piece of sculpture as a single isolated block, Boccioni 
would attempt a further step in that direction. He would seek to reproduce the architectonic 
feeling of masses by fragmenting the image — slashing it through with light rays wedged 
into the plastic surface — and thus make sculpture come alive within its environment. This 
environment must constitute a mass continuous with the subject. In this way a dynamic 
compenetration is created between the two elements. To Cubist analysis and the sectioning 
of materials and objects, Boccioni counterposed the synthesis of ali the realities, of ali real 
elements, in a single, absolute, total image. Thus also, not the mechanical repetition in- 
volved in passing from the state of rest to the state of motion but the recomposition of ali 
the components, whether physical or mental, which interact in a gesture, would come into 
play. These theories he would attempt to apply to apparently lifeless objects as well, to a 
bottle sitting on a table for example, setting free the forces contained inside them. The bottle 
thus infiltrates the atmosphere in a spirai motion that prolongs the sensation of the object 
beyond its physical limits. 

"A Futurist sculp turai composition will contain within itself the kind of marvelous 
mathematical and geometrie elements that make up the objects of our time. And these 
objects will not be disposed alongside the statue as explanatory attributes or separate decora- 
tive elements but, in accord with the laws of a new conception of harmony, will be embed- 
ded in the muscular lines of a human body. Thus the wheel of some piece of machinery 
might project from a mechanic's armpit; thus the line of a table could cut right through the 
head of a man reading, and the book with its fan of pages could slice the reader's stomach 
into cross-sections." 

By such means the object itself is destroyed and liberated from its outward look: 
Sculptural representation will no longer seek to make it look "like" but, instead, recreate the 
"duration of the appearance." Thus Boccioni flatly rejected the concept of the statue as a 
rigid and static entity and of the monument as a rhetorical and commemorative grandiose 
expression. He condemned the work of three artists held up at the time as major sculptors: 
Constantin Meunier, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, and Auguste Rodin — the first because his 
conception of sculpture is too closely tied to that of the Greeks; the second because he 
emulates "the stonecarvers of the Gothic cathedrals"; and the third because his grandiose 
heroism was already fully realized by Michelangelo. 

The speed with which Boccioni composed his manifesto is typical — he was ready to 
explode into action at the first flicker of enthusiasm, as if a latent fever was always waiting 
to push his spiritual thermometer to its limit. Driven by an ever-present emotional tension 
he shaped ideas that themselves put him on the rack and, as it were, consumed even his 



206 



physical fiber. Certainly what Picasso, Archipenko, Duchamp-Villon, and Brancusi were 
exploring at the time forms the basis of these ideas. The approach of these artists to a plastic 
art remote from the pomposity and pseudo-grandeur of much of nineteenth-century sculp- 
ture would have ignited in Boccioni a desire to arrive at his own, different, sculptural 
expression. And so the sculptures he set about modeling would have few points of contact 
with the heads by Picasso that he had probably seen in the artist's studio or in Kahnweiler's 
gallery, or with the still-rigid formai constructions that Duchamp-Villon would soon abandon, 
or with Archipenko's schematic faceting of planes and analytical primitivism, or finally 
with the sublime archaic simplicity unique to Brancusi. 

In his first experiments, working with an overabundance of elements and materials, 
Boccioni indulged in a baroque exuberance of image. But use of such a variety of materials 
(some unorthodox) to render the object transparent or to accentuate its impact with space 
was not in accord with the formai clarity of his theories. In Fusion of a Head and a Window 
the real elements — a glass eye, a slat from a stretcher, hair — merely weigh down the plastic 
ensemble in a bulkiness that obstructs an overall vision. In Head + House + Light — the 
painting Matter (no. 60) translated into sculptural materials — the gigantic figure of his mother 
is deformed by force-lines and is penetrated by the houses and the balustrade of iron and 
wood; yet despite ali of Boccioni's efforts, however, the work does not communicate the 
dynamism he aimed at. The body, broken up by a thousand angularities, seems to repose on 
the enormous knotty hands without ever soaring on the impetus imparted by the projecting 
lines. In Antigraceful (no. 86), however, which most resembles Picasso's modeled heads, the 
head is caught up in the spirai that sweeps around it from the base upward and forms a 
homogeneous group with the house. 

But it was only with the studies on dynamism that Boccioni would succeed in 
pruning ali architectural excrescences from his figures. In Synthesis of Human Dynamism, 
the image seems to sweep everything encountered in its path into its whirling movement, 
and the tangle of muscles that look like strange mechanical elements seems to free itself 
from the static masses that weighed down the first sculptures. After the simplification of 
Spirai Expansion of Muscles in Movement, which marked a further step toward a dynamic 
synthesis, Boccioni arrived at Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (no. 88), the highest 
achievement of his entire sculptural effort. Here the body prolongs itself in a trajectory of 
motion that is astutely simplified and takes possession of the space around it: a harpoon 
launched into the circumambient air. Finally he had succeeded in representing in a single and 
therefore absolute form ali the possible variations of a movement, and what he achieved is 
an utterly successful synthesis of the struggle between object and ambience. 

Of the eleven plastic ensembles exhibited in Paris during the summer of 1913, only 
three examples survive: Antigraceful, Development of a Bottle in Space (no. 87), and Unique 
Forms of Continuity in Space. The other works were destroyed after the posthumous exhibi- 
tion in Milan during the winter of 1916. According to some sources they had been shown in 
the open air and after the exhibition closed were smashed by a violent storm. On the other 
hand, the artist's sister said they had been entrusted to the sculptor Brocchi, a friend of 
Boccioni's, who out of jealousy and willful negligence let them be destroyed in the process 
of moving. It matters little now how these works were lost. We can only mourn their 
disappearance and be grateful for the photographs that have survived. 



207 



Boccioni as Engraver 



On Aprii 28, 1907, during his period of work and study in Venice, Boccioni conscientiously 
entered in his diary the materials and preparations for etching he had learned from one 
Signor Zezzof. That spring he became involved for the first time in the engraving technique, 
and this new interest coincided with a sudden attraction to the graphic works of Rembrandt 
and Dùrer. While he would take these as models, he was firmly set on studying for himself 
the variations in chiaroscuro, the contrasts between zones of light and shadow, and the harsh 
effects of those odd angles of perspective or lighting particularly suited to the engraver's 
means. Numerous drawings done between 1907 and 1910, for the most part using pen, 
remind one of the swift metalpoint tracing of an etching in their quest after minute tonai 
variations in blacks and grays. Not unexpectedly, the first engravings done while he was stili 
in Venice do not yet communicate the emotional force so conspicuous in those from 1908-1909, 
which are charged with an intense pictorial sensibility. With increasing mastery of the 
technique he developed a more characteristically decisive graphic style, and his modeling 
took on surprising chromatic effects. 

Boccioni's subjects for the most part were little genre scenes drawn from his own 
everyday life, precisely laid-out landscapes, or portraits of an intimate, familiar character. 
Especially in the later though stili pre-Futurist engravings, light grazes the forms to bring 
out the details of the scene. The early efforts are stili mostly descriptive in character; in the 
later ones the contrast between blacks and whites becomes dramatic and ever more artfully 
contrived. 

Working the piate with a very sharp point made possible a diagonal rhythmic repeti- 
tion soon to be put into effect in the drawings done as dynamic studies for the series of 
paintings entitled States of Mind (no. 56). In the engravings of this time there is a romantic 
feeling for the material and above ali for gestures which, in their violence, add further 
impact to the highlights. The élan that is so much a part of the artist's character reveals itself 
with a fullness of spirit and an impetuosity that make little effort to mask his unbridled 
enthusiasm. 

It is not easy to establish connections between Boccioni's engravings and those 
of artists who preceded him. In an excellent article of 1933 on the artist's engravings, 
De Witt suggests influences from Fattori and Faruffini, meanwhile admitting that such 
comparisons are risky in view of Boccioni's "forthright independence." 

Some thirty examples are known of various subjects in drypoint or etching (nos. 
89-97). In the earliest phase, that of 1907, drypoint seems to have been more congenial to 
the artist, particularly for its velvety line. In incising directly into the copperplate with a 
drypoint needle, fine burrs, or ridges, are thrown up by the tool as it cuts each groove, and 
in printing the ink is held by these tiny burrs, creating painterly effects. Boccioni later 
preferred the etching technique — in fact, as early as 1907 there is an occasionai isolated 
etching or a work combining this technique with drypoint. 

According to Bellini (1972), Boccioni did not modify his plates. Variations occasion- 
ai^ noticeable are due entirely to the marked oxidation of a few plates, not to the artist's 
hand. Black ink was used most often, though a few examples were printed in sepia, san- 
guine, or green. 



208 



Only a single lithograph — after a drawing of 1913, Dynamism of a Cyclist — is known. 
It was executed in 1922 by the Bauhaus as part of a portfolio of prints by various contempo- 
rary artists. 



Boccioni as Commercial Artist 

The aspiring artist's contact with the world of commercial art carne very early. Severini and 
other sources indicate that the youth, arriving in Rome at the turn of the century, took 
drawing lessons from a painter named Mataloni who specialized in publicity posters. By 
1904 the creation of such works constituted the young man's sole source of income. True to 
his personality Boccioni sought something more in his assigned subjects than his employers 
may have looked for, studying ali the possibilities wherever they were to be found. He was a 
frequent visitor to the racetracks, where he made quick sketches of the jockeys. In Piazza di 
Spagna he drew the peasant women visiting for the day from the little country towns south 
of Rome, who wore the brilliantly colorful garments of the Roman Campagna and, to the 
beat of the tambourine, enlivened with their dancing the already somewhat overly self- 
conscious streets of the capital of a new nation and an ancient religion. A number of 
tempera drawings of this subject survive; one, dated May 13, 1904, helps to reconstruct the 
chronology of other stylistically related groups of temperas. 

In a letter to his mother and sister written from Paris on Aprii 17, 1906, the youthful 
explorer of a vast and stili unknown world wrote about how, in taking off for France, he felt 
freed from a great weight; the heaviest part of his burden was his work as a poster painter, 
which he despised to his core but had to rely on as his means of supporti "For two years 
now I no longer study because of those cursed posters. They have ruined my nerves. I 
cannot stand anyone anymore, love nothing anymore, see myself well and truly ruined. I 
have never written you this because it was no use to do so, but I say it now that it's ali over 
and now that for the last week I have been studying as in the past when I was pure. I have 
been contaminated by that revolting trade and will never do more of it. In another letter I'U 
talk to you about the whole business. The mere thought of it puts me into such a rage as to 
beat my head against a wall. I have lost two years without realizing it, I have let myself be 
outdistanced shamefully, and who knows if I will pick myself up again. E bastai" 

For ali his aversion to an activity that crushed him with its daily compromise, a few 
years later, around 1908, he had to resign himself to taking it up again in order to survive. 
Though he resented the time taken away from more serious work, with our hindsight we 
cannot deny the important role a working familiarity with commercial imagery had in the 
young artist's stylistic and compositional development. Years of having to "think big" in 
designing advertisements deepened his capacity to organize the space of a composition and 
encouraged him to seek out ever more daring perspective angles. Moreover, the limitations 
imposed by the two-dimensionality of the poster format forced him to concentrate his 
motifs to the full so that they could stand out against the background and not demonstrate 
mere virtuoso decorativism. This work would prove a stern exercise and training, invaluable 
for his ''true" trade as painter. 



209 



The eight illustrations for the Automobile Club (nos. 98 and 99), presumably com- 
pieteci around 1904, are of considerale interest. They contain a series of motifs Boccioni 
would develop later and are extraordinary evidence of how early his imagination was 
caught by what, in mature years, he would think of as "dynamisnn." As one would expect 
from such a sponsor, the subject imposed was very much le dernier cri at the moment: the 
automobile. In six of the eight temperas the machine is represented in movement: whirl- 
pools of arrowed signs that sweep around the wheels to give the impression the tires are 
revolving rapidly. The compositional device by which the machine is always drawn in 
perspective further brings out the sensation of movement he aimed at. Horses and dogs 
involved in a fox hunt dart from one side of the image to the other in a mad course. A few 
broad and well-defined lines do ali the work, and there is no hint of insistence on details. 
With the most summary indications the image not only reads clearly but also has an imme- 
diate visual impact. The well-defmed outlines of figures and objects seem to leap out from a 
uniform background. 

Boccioni would return to the theme of the automobile in a drawing for the cover of 
the weekly Avanti della Domenica (Rome, November 12, 1905). There, a detail of the vehicle 
in movement is isolated, and the diagonal composition is exploited to convey the impression 
of motion even more effectively and intensely. 



210 



Antigraceful 
Antigrazioso 1913 

Bronze 

24 X 20^2 X 16 in. (61 x 52.1 x 40.6 cm.) 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

The present work was cast in bronze by the 
lost-wax process in 1950-51 from the plaster 
originai, which then belonged to the Mari- 
netti family. The work was commissioned 
from the Perego foundry by Gino Ghiringhelli 
of the Galleria II Milione in Milan on the oc- 
casion of an exhibition of Italian art in Paris. 
In November 1956 this cast was sold by 
Benedetta Marinetti to Harry and Lydia Win- 
ston (now Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, 
New York), along with the two other bronzes, 
Development of a Botile in Space (no. 87) and 
Unique Forms of Contìnuity in Space (no. 88). 

The plaster model, exhibited in Paris in 
the summer of 1913 along with other sculp- 
tures, was sold on that occasion or shortly 
thereafter. Indeed, Boccioni in a letter to his 
friend Giuseppe Sprovieri — the young gallery 
owner and promoter of numerous Futurist 
projects, including the sculpture show in his 
gallery on Via del Tritone in Rome — stated 
that the work had been sold. In ali probability 
the letter dates to late 1913, shortly before the 
opening of the sculpture exhibition on De- 
cember 6. On the occasion of this Rome show 
the critic for // Tirso remarked: "The origi- 
nality and works of this man, who in a single 
year has passed from the quasi-Impressionist 
experiments of Antigraceful to the straightfor- 
ward Futurism of Unique Forms of Contìnuity 
in Space, are truly admirable! Antigraceful ai- 
ready offers some experiments in thickness and 
a few timid interpenetrations of planes." 

Exhibited again in Florence in 1914, as 
the property of Cavaliere Alberto Porta of 
Milan, the sculpture was analyzed by Longhi 
(1914): "A few words on Antigraceful will 
suffice. Imagine a Post-Impressionism that, by 
leaving much to the action of chiaroscuro, 
tends to consolidate some flowing, instanta- 
neous image — perhaps Rosso's old concierge 
— by gathering the disturbed plastic material 



in a stream of bulbous masses accompanied 
by some disorder; it is not an actual stylistic 
organization but is in any case a tendency to- 
ward style; the compressed lumps of flesh 
weigh in a few hollows constructed by the 
bony framework that here and there protrudes 
in hooks suggesting a submerged but secure 
structure. Again, the weightiness of the sag- 
ging material — this plastic obsession that dom- 
inates modem art — is vitally expressed where 
a number of bulbous forms hang on a single 
filament, hidden like a dozen soft figs attached 
to a single stem. Some elements remain out- 
side, alluded to but not integrated into the en- 
vironmental background, from which two 
superfluous papery segments radiate. But it is 
necessary to dwell on these elements some- 
what when they tend to stand out and almost 
to impose themselves. . . . Antigraceful: an ar- 
ticulated, almost submerged but sure struc- 
ture, since in its hollow intervals it clots in 
hardened bulbous masses — a hardening also 
in the organic sense — the convoluted mire of 




211 



Impressionism. Outside: vague memories of 
a static setting." 

Argan (1953) noted that while the sculp- 
ture maintains a realistic composition, it nev- 
ertheless "reflects the persuasion that every 
piane or outline belongs to the space no less 
than to the object and are together anatomy 
and perspective, anatomy and light, anatomy 
and corporeal reflection of other invisible and 
present objects." 

According to Taylor (1961): "Combining 
the heavy sculptural mass with freely moving 
surface planes, Boccioni has created a lively 
image that seems to burst with inner life. It 
startlingly merges geometrie forms with soft 
fleshy shapes yet is unified by the unflagging 
vitality of its surface. Many of Boccioni's cher- 
ished ideas find voice: The forms of faraway 
houses merge with the form of the head; the 
face has an extraordinary range of expressions; 
it smiles, frowns, or is pensive according to 
the view and the viewer; and bold rhythms 
seem to envelope the physical form. Yet bold 
and expressive as the head may be — and it cer- 
tainly shows at once Boccioni's impressive tal- 
ent for sculpture — it is just one long step 
removed from the freely modeled heads of 
Rosso, relating to them rather the way the 
final version of the States of Mind related to 
the originai studies." 

Martin (1968) remarked that "the vital- 
ity of the artist's mother appears to conquer 
the solidity and inertness of the material and — 
as in Materia [Matter; no. 60] — forces it to bear 
the changing imprints of her states of mind. 
The subtlety with which these rapid shifts of 
mood and position are shown — by means of 
variations and contrasts of precise and soft 
modelling, deep and shallow openings, etc. 
— points to an astounding technical fluidity 
and proves Boccioni's extraordinary sculptural 
talent." 

Golding (1972) compared Boccioni's 
sculpture with Picasso's Head, a bronze exe- 
cuted in the fall of 1909: "Picasso's Head ap- 
pears to have been known to Boccioni, at least 
in reproduction, and . . . Antigrazioso, proba- 
bly of the fall of 1912, gives the impression 



of being simply a more agitated, baroque re- 
working of the Cubist originai." 

In Antigraceful Boccioni tried to assert a 
poetic that denies to art that aspect of capti- 
vating agreeableness that had been essential 
for so many centuries. Here he accentuated 
the disagreeable aspect by distorting the face 
and cutting it with planes. Picasso's example 
had a particular importance in this phase of 
Boccioni's production; the Italian artist seems 
to have perfected the lessons of Picasso, even 
if this work stili looks unripe and stamped by 
a deliberately grotesque realism. In the transi- 
tion from painting to sculpture Boccioni lost 
that synthetic abstraction he had achieved in 
the paintings of 1912; in Horizontal Volumes 
(no. 59) the color together with the lines cre- 
ates a compenetration of figure and space that 
is lacking in Antigraceful, even if it appears to 
be an almost literal translation of the paint- 
ing. In the sculpture the relation between me- 
dium and image is too dramatized — the form 
does not succeed in freeing itself from mate- 
rial thickness and heaviness. 

The plaster originai, which has been in 
the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna di 
Roma since 1952, has lost the force-lines that 
were once inserted in the head. 



exhibitions: Detroit 1957-58, no. 20, p. 38, 
ili. p. 42; Milan 1960b, no. 41, p. 194, ili. p. 51; Paris, 
1960-61, no. 36, p. 24; New York 1961, no. 48, 
pp. 87, 92, 143, ili. p. 91; Detroit 1972-73; 
Washington, D.C., 1978, no. 50; Philadelphia 
1980-81, no. 44; New York 1973-74, no. 28; 
New York 1974-75 

literature: Curjel 1951, ili. p. 13; Argan and Calvesi 
1953, pi 42; Giedion-Welcker 1960, ili. p. 85; Degand 
and Arp 1957, ili. p. 30; Saarinen 1957, fig. 5, p. 65, 
ili. p. 34; Arts 1958, ili. p. 36; Francastel 1959, 
ili. p. 7; Seuphor 1960, p. 358, ili. p. 40; Pearlstein 
1961, ili. p. 30; De Grada 1962, pls. 74, 75, pp. 101, 
140, 146, 175, 177, 343; Winston 1962, ili. p. 6; Barr 
1963, p. 63, ili. p. 62; Taylor 1963, p. 303; Ballo 1964, 
no. 477, p. 500; Bowness 1965, ili. p. 125; Francoeur 
1967, ili. on cover; Licht 1967, p. 332, pi. 220; 
Arnason 1968, fig. 374, ili. p. 215; Martin 1968, 
pp. 164, 167, pi. 151; Bruno 1969, p. 108; Marrits 1970, 
ili. p. 344; Golding 1972, p. 16, ili. p. 17; Rye 1972, 
ili. p. 82; Cachin 1974, p. 39; Tisdall and Bozzolla 
1977, ili. no. 67, p. 73; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 774, p. 431 



212 



87. Development of a Botile in Space 

Sviluppo di una bottiglia nello spazio 1913 

Bronze 

15x24x13 in. (38.1 X61 X33 cm.) 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

The originai plaster model of this work be- 
longed to the Marinetti family until 1952, 
when it was acquired by Francisco Matarazzo 
Sobrinho for the museum of the University 
of Sào Paulo, Brazil. One of the first two cast- 
ings, executed in 1931 by Luigi Ciampaglia 



on behalf of the Galleria Chiurazzi, is in dark 
polished bronze and is now in the Galleria 
Civica in Milan; the other, in white metal, was 
acquired in 1947 by the Museum of Modem 
Art, New York. In 1949 the brothers Giovanni 
and Angelo Nicci cast two rough bronzes with 
a light brown patina, one of which was ac- 
quired by the Kunsthaus, Zurich, while the 
other, belonging to the Marinetti family, was 
sold in 1956 to Harry and Lydia Winston (now 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York). 

Two versions of the plaster model ex- 
isted, although from a comparison of contem- 





poraneous photographs, they do not seem to 
display differences in structure. Nevertheless, 
the titles — Development of a Botile in Space 
Through Form and Development of a Bottle in 
Space Through Color — indicate the two works 
differ from each other in that the latter was 
colored a bright red. According to an orai com- 
munication from Zeno Birolli, this second pos- 
ter model was destroyed along with other 
sculptures in 1917, but a young artist collected 
the fragments and reconstructed it. 

In a list he drew up for Sprovieri, on the 
occasion of the show held in Rome in the win- 
ter of 1913-14, Boccioni set the price of the 
sculpture — in its two versions — at 600 lire for 
the first and 400 lire for the second. The crit- 
ics reacted favorably to this work, and a re- 
viewer of the time described it as a "pure 
architectonic study, extremely graceful in its 
simplicity." 

Argan (1953) considered the sculpture "an 
analytical experiment on the relation between 
an internai space and an external one . . . the 
planes . . . are ... no longer boundaries to the 
object but [act] as communication and con- 
nection between these two spaces, as a means 
to restore the unity of the space beyond the 
empirical limits of things." 

Taylor (1961) stressed the dynamic aspect: 
"Looked at as a source of motion the bottle 
becomes a complex dynamic form. Its round- 
ness expands with a centrifugai momentum, 
engulfing the forms around it, while the high- 
lights and shadows create counter rhythms that 
produce conflicting internai shapes. Observed 
from any angle the sculpture conveys a sense 
of motion: Both light and motion are trans- 
lated into positive sculptural forms." 

Golding (1972) remarked: "Working with 
a humble, matter-of-fact subject, Boccioni 
seems to have experienced a sense of libera- 
tion and his Bottle is, except for the Unique 
Forms, his most perfectly realized sculpture 
and a minor masterpiece. The inner cylinder 
of the bottle has been laid bare and seems to 
unfold and spirai quite naturally and inevita- 
bly into the space around it, while the tilted 
architecture of the tabletop and the basin-like 



form of the bottle's first lateral expansion act 
as a support for the rest of the object's ver- 
tical ascent. More than in any other of Boc- 
cioni's works in three dimensions the dynamic, 
spiralling forms which carne most naturally 
to his hand are played off against the straight 
lines which he had originally felt would con- 
stitute the modernity of his sculpture, to 
achieve a perfect harmony. In a second, lost 
version of the subject, the straight line is 
sacrificed to violent, unbalanced corkscrew ef- 
fects which result in a feeling of instability 
and disintegration." 

Indeed, Boccioni executed another sculp- 
ture with the same subject, which was lost in 
ali probability in 1917. From the greater tor- 
sion and spiraling vitality one can deduce that 
the work Forme-forze di una bottiglia (Force-Forms 
of a Bottle) was modeled after Development of a 
Bottle in Space and was stili bound by solid com- 
positional patterns. The broad supporting base 
and the fractured stepped rise toward the body 
of the object that is suddenly released in the 
air like a spring infuse the sculpture with a mon- 
umentai feeling that the artist strove to elimi- 
nate in works that carne shortly thereafter. The 
present work is, however, an advanced exper- 
iment on the relations between object and sur- 
roundings, which Boccioni set out to explore 
in 1911. It should be compared with Table + 
Bottle + Houses (no. 63), a pencil drawing that 
bears notations of measurements. 

exhibitions: Detroit 1957-58, no. 21, p. 38, 
ili. p. 44; Los Angeles 1970-71, no. 9, pp. 232, 275, 
pi. 294, p. 295; Detroit 1972-73; New York 1974-75, 
no. 29; Washington, D.C. 1978, no. 51; Philadelphia 
1980-81, no. 45 

literature: Argan and Calvesi 1953, pi. 55; Saarinen 
1957, p. 65, ili. p. 64; Mellquist 1958, ili. , n. p. ; Canaday 
1959, no. 632, pp. 473, 500, ili. p. 501; Seuphorl960, 
p. 358, ili. p. 358; Taylor 1963, p. 295; Bowness 1965, 
ili. p. 126; Barilli 1968, pi. 28, pp. 46-47; Kramer 
1971, ili. p. 54; Krauss 1977, ili. no. 36, pp. 42-43; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no, 782, pp. 436-37 



215 



Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 

Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio 1913 

Bronze 

471/s x 34 x 32 3 /s in. (1 19.7 x 86.4 x 82.2 cm.) 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



This work is considered the most successful 
of Boccioni's sculptural experiments. The plas- 
ter originai, which belonged to the Marinetti 
family, was acquired in 1952 by Francisco 
Matarazzo Sobrinho for the museum of the 
University of Sào Paulo, Brazil. The castings 
in bronze are posthumous and were ordered 
by Marinetti; it is very likely that Boccioni 
himself, encouraged by the poet Apollinaire 
(as the artist stated in a letter to his friend Vico 
Baer), had expressed the wish that the plaster 
originai be cast in bronze. The first casting 
was executed in 1931 on behalf of the Galleria 
Chiurazzi by the master craftsman Luigi 
Ciampaglia, who years before had made the 
large castings of the quadrigae on the memo- 
rial to Victor Emmanuel II in Piazza Venezia, 
Rome. On this occasion two specimens were 
done: the first in dark polished bronze (Civico 
Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan) and 
the second in highly polished, copper-plated 
brass (Museum of Modem Art, New York). 
A second casting, ordered by the Marinetti 
family, was done in 1949 by Giovanni and An- 
gelo Nicci. So as to be more faithful to the 
originai, these two examples were left "crude- 
ly" cast and varnished a light brown color. 
Furthermore, in order to respect the complex 
structure of the originai plaster, the architec- 
tonic base was also included. One of these 
two casts (the present work) was acquired in 
1956 by Harry and Lydia Winston (now Col- 
lection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York). 
Other examples of this. important sculpture, 
cast in the 1960s directly from one of the 
bronzes, do not have the thrust and stylistic 
elegance of the originai. 

Boccioni considered this sculpture the 
most successful of his works in this genre. 
On September 4, 1913, he wrote to Giuseppe 



Sprovieri, director of the Galleria Futurista in 
Rome, where the first Italian exhibition of the 
artist's sculpture would be held in December 
1913: "I want . . . to recali from Paris, where 
it is presently at the Arte Sagot storeroom, 
my statue. . . called Unique Forms of Continu- 
ity in Space. It is my most recent work and it 
is the most liberated. It certainly should be 
included. If we do this exhibition 1*11 also send 
you the thirty drawings exhibited in Paris con- 
cerning sculptural dynamics." 

In 1914 Roberto Longhi, then a young 
art historian, wrote a monograph on Boccioni's 
sculpture. He dwelled at length on the struc- 
tural and architectonic qualities of the present 
work: "Never has a higher and more impera- 
tive intimation of the purely plastic vision been 
achieved. Synthesis of articulation — estab- 
lished in the spirai expansion — fleshly synthe- 
sis — in the muscles in velocity — join here in 
a single, perfectly constructed body. The coldly 
enumerated qualities — almost Assyrian — in 
the analysis of human dynamism interweave 
inexpressibly among themselves. Material nei- 
ther too burnished nor too flowing, outline 
leaping and fatigued at the same time: organ- 
ism and setting: pure architecture. " 

Argan (1953) stated: "Unique Forms of 
Continuity in Space is simply a further acceler- 
ation, an even swifter motion; and if the faster 
rhythm consumes what has remained of the 
object, it carefully spares the attitude. The 
'superfluous' . . . is destroyed by velocity, but 
the velocity remains dislocation in space and 
does not constitute itself as body. It arrives at 
aerodynamic form, determined by a passage 
through space . . . the image of motion be- 
comes concrete in an immobile, contemplated 
form. In the end the formai theme is stili a 
moment of equilibrium, and thus of stasis, 



216 



the equilibrium or identity reached, as a re- 
sult of movement, between the dispersal of 
the body in space and the condensation of 
space in the body." 

Taylor (1961) commented: "The figure 
in Unique Forms of Continuity in Space strides 
forth, a symbol of vitality and strength, yet 
its impetuous step rests lightly on the ground 
as if the opposing air gave the figure wings. 
It is muscular without muscles, and massive 
without weight. The rhythms of its forms 
triumph over the limitations of the human 
stride to suggest unending movement into 
infinite space. Of ali Futurist works this best 
illustrates Boccioni's often repeated term 
'physical transcendentalism. ' The physical 
seems to lift itself by its own strength into 
the realm of the spirit. The long study of mo- 
tion that preceded this work is justified not 
because it teaches us about perception or move- 
ment, but because it has produced an exhila- 
rating symbol that in some mysterious way 
allows us to transcend for a moment those 
very physical qualities to which it draws our 
attention. Its forward thrust and assured pace 
express a buoyant optimism towards the mod- 
em worid." 

Martin (1968) remarked: "The strong 
torso welcomes and is constructed for strong 
air pressure; its powerful but open chest has a 
firm breastbone like that of a bird, which pro- 
jects forwards and upwards as though to pro- 
tect the head with a knob suggesting the hilt 
of a sword, or the mask of a fencer or motor- 
cyclist. In this and other alterations of the 
human body to portray its adaptation to speed, 
there is a striking reminder of Marinetti's pre- 
diction of the 'non-human model' of the fu- 
ture, based on Lamarck's evolutionary hypo- 
thesis. This new, 'mechanical' being would be 
'built to withstand an omnipresent speed. . . . 
He will be endowed with unexpected organs 
adapted to the exigencies of continuous shocks. 
[There will be] a prow-like development of 
the projection of the breastbone which will 
increase in size as the future man becomes a 
better Aver.' " 

Although he saw a dose connection 



between the work of Boccioni and that of Al- 
exander Archipenko, Golding (1972) recog- 
nized a firm autonomy in the Italian artist: "It 
is perhaps fairest to see Boccioni's evolution, 
at least in the final 1913 phase, in terms of a 
more purely internai development which in- 
volved a recognition, however grudging, of 
an indigenous Italian and ultimately classicising 
tradition, which he had originally rejected out 
of hand. The most marked stylistic change in 
his own work has been seen from a sculpture 
which attempted to use only the straight line, 
through to a work which exults in the spirai. 
. . . The final armless image with its muscular 
contortions reminiscent of fluttering wet drap- 
ery owes more than a little to the originally 
despised forms of antiquity. The Victory of 
Samothrace and the speeding automobile have 
in a sense become one." 

There can be no doubt that there is an 
affinity between Boccioni's sculpture and the 
Nike of Samothrace. The sudden movement 
of the torso, which rises as though checked 
by a strong wind that it must overcome, seems 
inspired by the elegant fluidity of the ancient 
statue. The forms that emerge from the body 
recali the soft draperies of the Nike and the 
sudden spread of the large wings. 

exhibitions: Detroit 1957-58, no. 18, p. 38, 
ili. front and back cover; Detroit 1969, no. 27; 
Detroit 1972-73; New York 1973-74, no. 30; New 
York 1974-75; Washington 1978, no. 52; Philadelphia 
1980-81, no. 48; Washington 1981, no. 356 



literature: Degand and Arp 1957, ili. p. 30; 
Winston 1958, ili. p. 11; Seuphor 1960, p. 358, 
ili. p. 43; Carrieri 1961b, p. 66; Kuh 1962, ili; Winston 
1962, ili. p. 5; Taylor 1963, pp. 302, 303, ili.; 
Bowness 1965, ili. p. 72; Kuh 1965, no. 30, p. 135, 
ili. p. 51; Baro 1967, ili. p. 72; Taylor 1968, p. 85; 
Rye 1972, ili p. 89; Tisdall and Bozzolla 1977, no. 82, 
p. 83; D'Harnoncourt 1980, p. Ili; Kramer 1980, 
p. 41; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 856, pp. 466-70 



218 



Etchings 



89. Man Lying in a Field 

Uomo sdraiato su un prato 1907 

Etching and drypoint 
5 7 /8X9V4Ìn. (14.9X23.5 cm.) 
Signed bottoni right: U. Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



90. The Artisti Mother Crocheting 
La madre con l'uncinetto 1907 

Etching and drypoint 

14 5 /8Xl2V8Ìn. (37.lx30.8cm.) 

Signed bottoni right: U. Boccioni; dated bottoni 

center (in reverse): 1907 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



91 . Seated Woman Holding a Fan 
Signora con ventaglio 1907 

Drypoint 

9 3 /sX6in. (23.8 x 15.2 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



92. Piazza del Duomo 1908 
Etching 

4%x3in. (12.lx7.6cm.) 

Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence 



93. Landscape with Industriai Plants 
Periferia 1908 

Drypoint 

3 5 /8X6in. (9.2 X 15.2 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Umberto Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



219 



Sheet of Studies with Pive Portraits 
Schizzi di teste 1909 



Drypoint 

Wixliysin. (18.4 x 28.9 cm.) 

Signed bottom right: Umberto Boccioni 

Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

Male Cadaveri "The Drowned Man" 
L'annegato 1909 

Etching 

3%x5 7 /8in. (9.8xl4.9cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

The Artisti Mother at a Table 

La madre davanti al tavolo con forbici 1910 

Etching 

5 3 /8X4 5 /8in. (13.7X11.7 cm.) 

Signed and dated bottom right: Boccioni gennaio 1910 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 

The Artist's Mother Sewing 
La madre che cuce 1910 

Etching 

5 1 / 2 x4 1 /2in. (14xll.4cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
Collection Lydia Winston Malbin, New York 



literature: no. 89— De Witt 1933, p. 124; Perocco 
1958; Taylor 1961b, no. 301; Archivi del Futurismo, 
1962, no. 416; De Grada 1962, no. 4 {Uomo sdraiato 
sul prato [Il solitario]); Ballo 1964, no. 41, pp. 111-12; 
Bellini 1972, no. 9; Calvesi 1973, no. 5; Calvesi and 
Coen 1983, no. 270 

No. 90— DeWitt 1933, p. 119; Argan and Calvesi 
1953, p. 30; Taylor 1961b, no. 299; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 424; Ballo 1964, no. 64, p. 112; 
Bruno 1969, no. 31b; Bellini 1972, no. 14; Calvesi 
and Coen 1983, no. 275 

No. 91— DeWitt 1933, p. 121; Taylor 1961b, 
no. 309 (1909-1910); Archivi del Futurismo 1962, 
no. 422; Ballo 1964, no. 40, p. Ili; Belimi 1972, no. 8; 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 285 

No. 92— Ballo 1964, no. 117, p, 112; Bellini 1972, 
no. 18; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 390 

No. 93— Taylor 1961b, no. 307 (1909-1910); 
Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 122, p. 112; Bellini 
1972, no. 20; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 391 



No. 94— Taylor 1961, no. 304; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 419; Ballo 1964, no. 37, p. Ili; 
Bellini 1972, no. 5; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 400 

No. 95— Taylor 1961, no. 308 (1909-1910); 
Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 427; Ballo 1964, 
no. 61, p. Ili (1907); Bruno 1969, no. 35b; Bellini 

1972, no. 13 (1907); Calvesi 1973, no. 7 (1908-1909); 
Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 452 

No. 96— De Witt 1933, p. 122; Taylor 1961b, 
no. 313; Archivi del Futurismo 1962, no. 423; Ballo 
1964, no. 282; Bruno 1969, no. 110; Bellini 1972, 
no. 29; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 460 

No. 97— Taylor 1961b, no. 316; Archivi del 
Futurismo 1962, no. 411; Bellini 1972, no. 28; Calvesi 

1973, no. 17; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 620 



220 



90 




91 




93 




223 




97 



Cartoons 



98. Car in Motion 

Auto in corsa 1904 

Tempera on cardboard 
28x49y4in. (71X125 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: U. Boccioni 
Automobile Club d'Italia, Rome 



literature: No. 98 — Ballo 1964, no. 1, p. 61; 
Calvesi 1970, p. 185; Fagiolo 1971, pp. 50-52; 
Damigella 1972, p. xlviii, no. 414; Calvesi 1973, 
no. 2; Calvesi and Coen 1983, no. 140 

No. 99— Fagiolo 1971, pp. 50-52; Damigella 1972, 
pp. lxviii-lxix, no. 418; Calvesi and Coen 1983, 
no. 146 



99. Car and Fox Hunt 

Automobile e caccia alla volpe 1904 

Tempera on cardboard 
22% X 48 in. (57.5 X 122 cm.) 
Signed bottom right: Boccioni U. 
Automobile Club d'Italia, Rome 




99 



Detail ofno. 75 a D> 



WRITINGS 




Writings 



Manifesto of the Futurist Painters 229 

Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting 230 

Futurist Painting 231 

Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture 240 
What Divides Us from Cubism (from Pittura, scultura 

juturiste, 1914) 243 

Futurist Architecture: A Manifesto 248 
The Italian Futurist Painters and Sculptors (English text 

from the catalogue for the "Panama-Pacific International 

Exhibition," San Francisco, 1915) 250 

Marinetti on Boccioni 252 
Excerpts from Boccioni's Diary (English translation from texts 

in Birolli 1971-72) 256 



MANIFESTO OF THE FUTURIST PAINTERS 

February 11, 1910 



To the young artists of Italyl 
The cry of rebellion we launch here, in which 
we fìrmly implant our ideals alongside those of 
the Futurist poets, does not come from a little 
aesthetic-minded clique but, on the contrary, 
expresses the violent desire that seethes in the 
veins of every creative artist today. 

We want to fight to the bitter end against the 
fanatical, thoughtless, and purely snobbish re- 
ligious faith in the past stoked by the nefarious 
existence of the museums. We are rebelling 
against the sluggishly supine admiration for old 
canvases, old statues, old objects, and against 
the enthusiasm for everything worm-eaten, rot- 
ting with filth, eaten away by time. And we 
judge unjust — criminal in fact — the habitual dis- 
dain for everything young, new, throbbing with 
life. 

Comrades! We declare to you that triumphant 
progress in the sciences has brought about, in 
humanity as a whole, changes so profound as 
to dredge out an abyss between the past and us 
free creatures who are securely confident in the 
radiant magnificence of the future. 

We are nauseated by the despicable sloth that, 
e ver sin ce the sixteenth century, has let our art- 
ists survive only through an incessant rework- 
ing of the glories of the past. 

For the people of other nations Italy is stili a 
land of the dead, an immense Pompeii stili whit- 
ening with sepulchers. But Italy is being re- 
born, and in the wake of her politicai resurgence 
an intellectual resurgence is taking place. In 
the land of the illiterates schools are opening; 
in the land of dolce far niente innumerable facto- 
ries are now roaring full tilt; in the land of tra- 
ditional aesthetics one is struck today by a new 
élan, by lightning-bright inspirations of some- 
thing utterly new. 

Only that art is vital which fmds its own ele- 
ments in the world around it. Just as our fore- 



bears drew material for their art from the 
religious atmosphere weighing heavily on their 
souls and spirits, we must now draw our inspi- 
ration from the tangible miracles of contempo- 
rary life, from the iron network of speed that 
enwraps the world, from the ocean liners, the 
dreadnoughts, the marvelous flights furrowing 
the skies, from the depth-dark feats of the un- 
derwater navigators, from the convulsive strug- 
gle for the conquest of the unknown. Then too 
how can we remain indifferent to the frenetic 
activity of the great capitals, to the utterly new 
psychology of a life that takes wing only after 
dark, to the febrile figures of the viveur, the 
cocotte, the apache, the addicts to drink? 

Because we propose to play our part in the 
badly needed renewal of ali expressions of art, 
we resolutely declare war against ali those art- 
ists and against ali those institutions that, how- 
ever they may camouflage themselves in raiment 
of pseudo-modernity, remain mired in tradi- 
tion, in academicism, in a repugnant mental 
laziness. 

We cali on ali young people to unleash their 
scorn on the whole lot of brainless canaille who 
in Rome applaud a sick-making reflorescence 
of spineless classicism; who in Florence praise 
to the skies the neurotic cultists of a hermaph- 
roditic archaism; who in Milan heap fmancial 
rewards on a pedestrian and blind manual skill 
à la 1848; who in Turin adulate a painting typi- 
cal of pensioned-off government functionaries; 
and in Venice glorify a farraginous rubbish heap 
turned out by fossilized alchemists! In short, 
we rise up against the superficiality, banality, 
and slovenly corner-workshop facility that 
makes most of the widely respected artists in 
every region of Italy worthy, instead, of the 
deepest contempt. 

Out with you, then, bought-and-sold restor- 
ers of hack paintings! Out with you, archaeol- 
ogists infected with chronic necrophilia! Out, 
critics, you complaisant panderers! Out, gouty 



academics, besotted and ignorant professors! 
Out! 

Go ask those high priests of the True Cult, 
those guardians of the Aesthetic Laws, where 
the works of Giovanni Segantini are to be seen 
today; ask them why the officiai commissions 
do not even recognize the existence of Gaetano 
Previati; ask them where Medardo Rosso 's 
sculpture is appreciated at its true worth! . . . And 
who takes the trouble to think about the artists 
who don't have twenty years of struggles and 
sufferings behind them but nonetheless are pre- 
paring works destined to bring honor to the 
homeland? Oh no, those critics ever ready to 
sell themselves have very different interests to 
defend! The exhibitions, the competitions, and 
the superfìcial and never-disinterested critics are 
what condemn Italian art to what is, plainly 
speaking, prostitution! 

And what should we say about the "special- 
ists"? Come, come! Let's make an end once and 
for ali to the Portraitists, the Genreists, the Lake 
Painters, the Mountain Painters! — We have put 
up with them quite enough, with ali those im- 
potent painters of rustie weekends! 

Let us make an end also to the defacers of 
marble who clutter up our piazzas and profane 
our cemeteries! An end to the quick-money 
architecture of the jobbers of reinforced con- 
crete! An end to the common run of deco ra- 
to rs, the fakers of ceramics, the poster painters 
who sell themselves, and the slovenly and thick- 
headed illustra tors! 

And here are our conclusions resolute and 
in a nutshell. With our enthusiastic adherence 
to Futurìsm we aim: 

1. To destroy the cult of the past, the obses- 
sion with ali things old, academic pedantry, and 
formalism 

2. To cast our scorn profoundly on every last 
form of imitation 

3. To exalt every form of originality, even if 
foolhardy, even if extremely violent 



229 




Boccioni in his studio in front of his painting Matter {Materia, 

no. 60), ca. 1912. Photo: Luca Carrà, Milano. Courtesy Angelo Calmarini 



4. To bear bravely and proudly the smear of 
"madness" with which they try to gag ali 
innovators 

5. To look on the lot of art critìcs as at one 
and the sanie time useless and dangerous 

6. To rebel against the tyranny of the words 
"harmony" and "good taste," expressions so 
elastic that they can just as easily be used to 
demolish the art of Rembrandt, Goya, and 
Rodin as well 

7. To sweep out of the mental fìeld of art ali 
themes and subjects already exploited 

8. To render and magnify the life of today, 
incessantly and tumultuously transformed by 
science triumphant. 

Let the dead be buried in the deepest bowels 
of the earth! Let the future's threshold be swept 
clean of mummies! Make way for the young, 
the violent, the headstrong! 

Painter Umberto Boccioni (Milan) 

Painter Carlo Dalmazzo Carrà (Milan) 

Painter Luigi Russolo (Milan) 

Painter Giacomo Balla (Rome) 

Painter Gino Se verini (Paris) 



TECHNICAL MANIFESTO OF FUTURIST PAINTING 

Aprii 11, 1910 



In the first manifesto launched by us on March 
8, 1910* from the stage of the Politeama Chiarella 
in Turin, we expressed our deep disgust, our 
haughty contempt, our joyful rebellion against 
the vulgarity, the mediocrity, and the fanatical 
and snobbish cult of the past which are suffo- 
cating art in our country. 

At that point we were concerned with the 
relations existing between us and society. Today, 
however, with this second manifesto, we reso- 
lutely break away from any and every merely 
relative consideration and soar to the highest 
expressions of the pictorial absolute. 

Our desire for truth cannot be satisfied by 
traditional Form or by traditional Color! 

Gesture, for us, will no longer be a single 
moment within the universal dynamism brought 
to a sudden stop: It will be, outrightly, dynamic 
sensation given permanent form. 

Everything is in movement, everything rushes 
forward, everything is in Constant swift change. 
A figure is never stable in front of us but is 
incessantly appearing and disappearing. Because 



images persist on the retina, things in move- 
ment multiply, change form, follow one upon 
the other like vibrations within the space they 
traverse. Thus a horse in swift course does not 
have four legs: It has twenty, and their move- 
ments are triangular. 

Everything in art is merely convention, and 
yesterday's truths are today, for us, simply lies. 

We affirm once again that, to be a work of 
art, the portrait neither can nor ought to re- 
semble its sitter and that the painter has within 
himself ali the landscapes he may ever wish to 
picture. To paint a figure one should not paint 
it as something in itself; one needs to make vis- 
ible its atmosphere. 

Space no longer exists; a Street soaked by rain 
and lit by electric light plunges deep into the 
earth's center. The sun is thousands of kilome- 
ters distant from us; but the house directly in 
front of us, may it not strike our eye as wedged 
and mounted into the solar disk? Who can stili 
believe bodies are opaque when our heightened 
and multiplied sensibilities make us intuit the 



obscure manifestations of spiritualistic phenom- 
ena? Why do we need to continue to create with- 
out taking into account our power of sight, 
which itself can give results entirely like those 
of X-rays? 

Innumerable examples support what we state 
here. 

The sixteen people you have around you in a 
tram in rapid motion are one, ten, four, three; 
they stand in place and at the same time are in 
movement; they go and come, are projected 
out into the Street and swallowed up by a patch 
of sunlight, then suddenly are back in their seats: 
perduring symbols of the universal vibration. 
And at times it happens that, on the cheek of 
the person we are speaking with in the Street, 
we see a horse that passes by a good way off. 
Our bodies enter into the very sofas we sit on 
and the sofas themselves enter into us, in the 
same way as the passing tram enters into the 
houses which, in their turn, hurl themselves 
on the tram and become one with it. 

The way pictures are constructed is stupidly 



230 



traditional. Painters have always shown us things 
and persons as if set directly in front of us. We 
however will put the viewer himself in the cen- 
ter of the picture. 

As in ali the fields of human thought, the 
inveterate obscurantisms of dogma have been 
replaced by enlightened individuai investigation. 
And so, likewise, in our art the academic tradi- 
tion must inevitably give way to an invigorat- 
ing current of individuai liberty. 

We desire to take our place again in life itself. 
Today's science, rejecting its past, answers to 
the material needs of our time; art no less, re- 
jecting its own past, should respond to the in- 
tellectual needs of our time. Our new awareness 
no longer lets us view man as the center of 
universal life. For us, a man's pain is interest- 
ing no less but no more than that of an electric 
bulb which, functioning, suffers and endures 
agonies and cries out in the most lacerating ex- 
pressions of color; and the musicality of the 
line and folds of a modem garment have, for 
us, an emotional and symbolic power entirely 
like that the nude had for the old masters. 

In order to conceive and comprehend the new 
beauties of a modem picture the soul must be- 
come pure again, the eye must free itself from 
the veil cast over it by atavism and culture and 
consider the only controlling factor to be Na- 
ture, certainly not the Museum! 

Then at last everyone will become aware that 
it is not brown that courses beneath our epider- 
mis but instead that yellow glows there, red 
blazes there, green and azure and violet dance 
there, voluptuous and inviting! How can one 
stili think of a human face as rosy pink when 
our new nocturnal life has given us, undeni- 



ably, a doublé life? The human face is yellow, is 
red, is green, is blue, is violet. The pallor of a 
woman eyeing a jeweler's showcase is more ir- 
idescent than ali the prisms of the jewels that 
fascinate her. 

The possibilities we sense in paint cannot sim- 
ply be murmured. We are making them sing 
and shout in our canvases which blast out deaf- 
ening and triumphal fanfares. 

And that is why your eyes, so long accus- 
tomed to dusky dimness, will be opened to the 
most brilliant visions of light. The very shad- 
ows we will paint will be more pregnant with 
light than our predecessors' brightest high- 
lights, and our pictures, compared with those 
stored away in the museums, will glow like the 
most resplendent day counterposed to the most 
sepulchral night. 

This, naturally, leads us to conclude that paint- 
ing cannot subsist without Divisionism. Yet Di- 
visionism, in our concept, is not a technical means 
that can be methodically learned and applied. 
Divisionism, for the modem painter, must be 
a congenital complementarity, something we judge 
essential and indispensable. 

And to end with, we reject the facile accusa- 
tion of "baroquism" aimed against us. The ideas 
set forth here have derived solely from our own 
heightened sensibility. Whereas "baroquism" 
signifies artifice, maniacal and marrowless vir- 
tuosity, the Art we envisage is compounded en- 
tirely of spontaneity and potency. 

We proclaim: 

1 . That congenital complementarity is an ab- 
solute necessity in painting, like free verse in 
poetry and polyphony in music 



2. That the dynamism universal in ali things 
must be rendered as the sensation of that dyna- 
mism itself 

3. That in interpreting Nature one needs sin- 
cerity and a virgin approach 

4. That motion and light destroy the mate- 
rial nature and look of solid bodies. 

We fight: 

1 . Against the false gloss and glazing of mod- 
em pictures to make them look old 

2. Against the superficial and elementary ar- 
chaism to be gotten from using fiat colors, 
which reduces painting to an impotent synthe- 
sis not only infantile but grotesque 

3. Against the false would-be Futurism of the 
Secessionists and Independents, those new aca- 
demics found in every country 

4. Against the nude in painting, which is no 
less boringly insipid and depressing than adul- 
tery in literature. 

You think us mad. Quite the contrary: We 
are the Primitives of a new and completely trans- 
formed sensibility. 

Outside the atmosphere in which we our- 
selves live, there are only glum shadows. We 
Futurists are climbing toward the loftiest and 
most radiant summits, and we proclaim our- 
selves Lords of the Light because, already, we 
are drinking from the living founts of the Sun. 

Painter Umberto Boccioni (Milan) 

Painter Carlo Dalmazzo Carrà (Milan) 

Painter Luigi Russolo (Milan) 

Painter Giacomo Balla (Rome) 

Painter Gino Severini (Paris) 



FUTURIST PAINTING 

by Umberto Boccioni 

Lecture delivered at the Circolo Artistico, Rome, May 29, 1911 



I hope, friends, that it will give you pleasure to 
follow our vehement look into the future, and 
that you will join me in laughing at those stiff- 
necks who are forever looking backward. My 
friends, just imagine when the superficial, pre- 
tentious public find themselves face to face with 
paintings by a Futuristi When they look at and 
into our canvases with our theories in mind? 
We will be smiling and serene when that day 
comes, as we have always been in the middle 
of a howling mob who regularly mock any- 



thing they do not understand. Those who at- 
tack and insult us daily do not know that the 
human mind operates between two horizon 
lines, the absolute and the relative, both equally 
infinite, and draws between them the jagged 
and painful line of the possible. 

In time the picture as we know it will suffice 
no longer. Its immobility will be an archaism 
in the vertiginous movement of human life. The 
human eye will see colors as feelings material- 
ized. Colors, now multiplied, will not need 



forms to be understood, and pictorial works 
will become whirling musical compositions of 
enormous colored gases. On a stage free of 
horizons, these works will excite and electrify 
the complex soul of a crowd we cannot yet 
conceive of. 

We Futurists find in our daily evolution an 
occasionai tendency parallel to the Cubists. But 
right from the start let us declare that the word 
Cubism means nothing; painting has always 
aspired to the sense of volume among many 



231 



aims, and, strictly speaking, this is the most 
external and least profound aspect of the school 
that passes under that name. How, in fact, can 
one include under the name Cubism the com- 
plex reproduction of an object, that is, the in- 
tegrai reconstruction of the internai and external 
forms that make it up? 

Having brushed aside that word, we want to 
ask our detractors who laughed at our Techni- 
cal Manifesto why, when news comes from 
France of a revolutionary tendency having some 
analogy with ours, some of them now rush to 
think about it and discuss it? Why did they laugh 
when we Italians, in this country stili littered 
with ruins and populated by aesthetic mum- 
mies, denied that bodies were opaque [and 
affirmed] that images be multiplied, bodies 
compenetrated, details dislocated, and the su- 
preme necessity of making the viewer the cen- 
ter of the picture? 

This aspiration to move images about at will 
and consequently create a hieroglyphics of 
music, this return to pure pictorial values to 
ensure the triumph of a more inward, thus a 
more abstract art — this violent aspiration has 
brought us nothing but contumely and deri- 
sion from long-lived skeptics in Italy and 
elsewhere. 

We declare that what passes under the name 
of Cubism is only a transitional tendency, and 
that our aspirations to a truly abstract painting 
are much more substantial. We believe that ev- 
erything we have called simultaneity of states 
of mind — that means representing the connec- 
tions between what is remembered and what is 
seen — is merely an intermediate stage, a bridge 
between the old traditional painting and the 
Futurist. 

The public that protests before our canvases 
does not know that in those canvases we find 
too many veristic forms and obvious details of 
imitation and that we dream of bringing our 
pictures to life on the day of liberation with 
pure quantities, pure dimensions, pure color- 
ings of things newly transfigured and created. 

We think that every physical body, besides 
having volume, that is, the values of tonality, 
has its own special physiognomy, a tendency 
of its lines to show us its true character, that I 
would cali anarchica!, or the absolute predomi- 
nance of its own self, eternali y and fatally at 
war with the world outside it. 

There being no penai code, as there is for 
common crimes, that punishes offenses against 
the sacred majesty of traditional aesthetics, nat- 
urally the public, like ali barbarie agglomera- 
tions, makes summary j usti ce of ideas offensive 



to the Establishment . . . this being its unique way 
of conceiving the right. 

This may explain the degree of fury, unusual 
in aesthetic controversies, behind the assault 
from the press, the public, and colleagues sed- 
entary or shop-minded on our Technical Mani- 
festo of Futurist Painting when it was barely 
printed. Insults from the credulous, calumnies 
from the envious, sneers from skeptics and ig- 
norant alike, left us completely indifferenti We 
knew that our manifesto, being a work of art 
and therefore existing in the absolute, demanded 
of the reader not only a high intelligence but 
also a special predisposition to make contact 
with pure intuition. Our serenity and cairn, at 
which even Futurismi enemies marvel, come 
to us from our profound compassion for ali who 
have never been concerned with other than 
superficial and relative questions yet seek to 
disprove what soars to the heights of the spirit, 
peaks reached only after long, scrupulous prep- 
aration and unceasing communion with the out- 
side world. 

If it is true that Relativity governs the world, 
unfortunately it is also true that without the 
lìghtning flashes of the Absolute, which are 
granted only to the few, humanity would pro- 
ceed into darkness, indeed would cease to exist 
for its incapacity to recognize its own existence! 
And to the best of my knowledge that flash of 
understanding never comes through explana- 
tions or preambles; one must assume that those 
who rail at us have very small minds if they 
cannot comprehend that the absolute is eternai 
aspiration and that work is what is relative; that 
to create is already to circumscribe; that to com- 
ment is to circumscribe what is circumscribed, 
is to subdivide the divided, to reduce to the 
minimum, to annihilate! 

So my explanations of the essence of our 
Technical Manifesto are a concession to the rela- 
tivity of life itself ! 

The world does not understand the eternai, mys- 
terious evolution of the spirit until some great 
specific fact presents it with a limit and a recog- 
nizable principle. But for the thinker who un- 
failingly sets limits and principles, that one limit 
and principle do not exist. For this reason, when 
one individuai cries out into the night: This is 
the truthl, the sleeping world which always fa- 
vors the truisms awakes with howls and pro- 
tests. That is why everybody cries out nowadays 
for a Christian era and denies that a scientific 
era has already been born. They do not deny, 
of course, that everything in the world today 
may be analyzed scientifically, but they do deny 



that this is the major factor in the modem 
psyche, entirely comparable for us with the nat- 
urai events, the major transformations, in his- 
torical and prehistorical times. They deny that 
scientific discoveries have completely remade 
the mental fabric of the world, that a radicai 
change has come about in our spirit, and that, 
just as animai species have multiplied in form, 
structure, and character with altered conditions 
of existence, so electricity and telegraphy, steam 
and aviation have deepened the gap in mental 
difference between ourselves and our grandfa- 
thers (now so much wider than between them 
and, forexample, thecentury of Aristotle). And 
thus our conviction that our time initiates a new 
era naming us the primitives of a new, completely 
transformed sensibility. 

In consequence, this new condition of scien- 
tific relativity is responsible for our new feel- 
ing about seeking the absolute. We painters (for 
I shall be speaking about painting) feel that we 
divine in this a psychic force that empowers 
the senses to perceive what has never been per- 
ceived before. We think that if everything tends 
toward Unity y man has so far perceived in unity 
only the miserable, blind, infantile decomposi- 
tion of things! 

Science, as we see it, has driven us back into 
a marvelous higher barbarism. The art of today 
is an exponent of that barbarism — • which starts 
in the French Impressionists, those true scien- 
tific temperaments — which throws itself with 
cries and ardent passions into the quest for a 
synthesis, for the ultimate reason behind the in- 
fìnity of new elements that science has given us. 

Ali historical periods resemble each other, and 
the compelling force of genius lies in its exact, 
mathematica! perception, conscious or uncon- 
scious, of its own historical moment. 

For this reason we declare to be absolutely 
insignificant the work of such painters as Sar- 
gent, Sartorio, or Zuloaga possessing nothing 
that corresponds to the pulse of the times. I 
could cite a number infìnitely greater than three 
major or minor painters, ali equally outside of 
art despite their talent. 

A superficial critic [deleted: Oietti] said a few 
years back that we were heading toward the 
mid-seventeenth century. . . . His mistake was 
in taking seriously merely current fashions in 
publishing (insignificant pauses on the high road 
to universal modem aspirations which can only 
be expounded by art). 

We say, on the contrary, that the whole so- 
cial life of our time shows a primitive uncer- 
tainty to be in the absolute ascendant, which to 
a thinker's deep eye — indifferent to minor 



232 



deviations — looks like the dawn of a radiant 
historical new day. 

In art, philosophy, or politics, values are col- 
lapsing in uproar, outcry, blood! We live in an 
environment overfull of detritus, and we should 
tune our souls to the racket of wrecking ma- 
chines. We Futurists, who know how to wait, 
have destroyed in ourselves ali traces of nostal- 
gia and regret, and we and those with us long 
to live in the future. We will never look to the 
past for an ideal of definitive beauty, and so we 
love the aesthetic expressions of our time how- 
ever they present themselves, crude as they may 
look and only roughly cleaned of the slag from 
the newest fusions. 

We want to combat the stupid blindness of 
the masses and the fear of newness in those 
discouraged minorities who unconsciously ab- 
sorb the practices and uses of modem life, yet 
repudiate everything that spiritually emanates 
from this new life or symbolizes it. Indeed one 
can say that scorn and derision are always heaped 
on the works that attempt to count the essen- 
tial eterni ties. 

However vehemently we may aspire to per- 
fection, we love those masterpieces that stili bear 
the marks of a collision between a world col- 
lapsing and one in birth. In the works of our 
time we love that look of infinite and painful 
experimentation which reveals the inexperience 
of the true creator at grips with a new mate- 
rial. We love those works because the truly new 
art will spring from them, yearned for by peo- 
ple ali over Europe for a century now and 
glimpsed in the heroic endeavors of a few rev- 
olutionary artists, most of whom perished as 
victims of commercialism and officiai painting. 

Someone has reminded us that ali transfor- 
mation in art as in life occurs only by slow 
evolution, and that nothing is separated from 
the past by a sharp clean cut. We reply that the 
time of transformations is now over, that the 
evolution has been successful (especially in 
France during these last fifty years); we deem 
ourselves primitives because we have seen, right 
up to yesterday, in what is called modem art 
the same phenomena that another great crisis 
produced, when the pagan world became trans- 
formed into the Christian world. Then too the 
conceptions of the divine essence and of men's 
destinies changed completely, but stili the art- 
isti hand drew forms bound to the pagan tra- 
dition. Fourth- and fifth-century sarcophagi, for 
example, display a strange mélange of Chris- 
tian subjects set forth in the old pagan type of 
form and execution. 

It may be argued that many of the newest 



modes of feeling have been finding expression 
over the past century but always in the tradi- 
tion handed down to us from the classics, al- 
ways in what is more or less colored drawing 
and form; and [it may be held that] the great 
French Impressionists and their European 
ramifications, through Seurat's Divisionism, 
Gauguin's Synthetism, the neo-Idealist and 
Symbolist synthetism of the Rosicrucian paint- 
ers, and up to the most modem Post-Impres- 
sionists or the Cubists or those called in France 
today the Wild Ones [Fauves], have been only 
transitional generations. 

We Futurists, who feel ourselves in the 
world's avant-garde, proclaim our complete 
detachment from the past. We are moving be- 
yond that demoralized dismay the first Chris- 
tian artists must have felt when they sought to 
express new values with entirely new forms that 
did not yet exist, emotion that exalted things 
never considered before, reality only then be- 
ginning to exist but already causing bloodshed 
and exciting enthusiasms and hopes beyond 
previous understanding: I speak here of piety, 
of the Christian faith! Surely you agree Chris- 
tian art had no choice but to bury or destroy 
the voluptuous marble images of the pagan 
gods. Well then, we too are inspired by great 
faith in our cali for the destruction of the mu- 
seums, libraries, and academies, in our dream 
of spiritual destruction which has been called 
blasphemous; our faith is contrary to the Chris- 
tian faith but equally profound, and no less in- 
transigent toward ali that invades, with a past 
by now hidden, the entirely new religion of 
the future. 

No Greek or Roman marble ever wept: The 
dying Gaul, Niobe and her children, even 
Laocoòn showed at the most a modest frown 
compared with the face on the Cross, filled with 
pain and grief. The human figure became spell- 
bound in the Byzantine mosaics, . . . wept and 
smiled in Italy, . . . wept and despaired among 
the barbarians. . . . Now, teli me, what link is 
there between a Greek marble, a Byzantine mar- 
ble, and the panel painting of an Italian or 
Northern primitive? To borrow the words of 
my great friend, Luigi Russolo, may it not be 
true that painting owed its marvelous rebirth, 
its entirely originai development, to the easy 
destruction of the pagan frescoes, graffiti, and 
mosaics, as compared with the many extant 
statues of marble and bronze? 

When Gauguin said that in art there are only 
revolutionaries and plagiarists, he put it well. 
And we who feel we have moved beyond the 
idea that individuality is sacred as part of hu- 



manity and who now proclaim that individual- 
ity is sacred for being engaged in an endless, 
resolute war against humanity — we are the art- 
ists in this epoch who will be called revolution- 
aries. We have the duty to wage daily war 
against the tyrannies of aesthetic reactionism 
and to remember that if tyrannies have been 
checked by guillotine and dagger, petrol and 
bombs can also be used to liberate us from the 
museums that dishonor us! 

The artist is the translator of the chaos that en- 
tangles things. People see colors, hear harmo- 
nies, weep, laugh, or hate in life just as artists 
have demonstrated in art. We wouldn't be able 
to imagine life in a past epoch without art's 
translation, for historical dates are meaningless 
in themselves. 

Now then, friends, there is something that 
sums up our epoch! Something that has never 
been expressed, has no fixed form, no color, but 
transfigures objects and is indeed their essence. 
This true reality is sensation. From this subjec- 
tive impression of Nature will arise a new aes- 
thetic, expressed in abstract signs dictated by 
the music of forms or the drama of movements. 

Our heart beats for verities born yesterday 
that cali for expression in forms, colors, words, 
and melodies never used before. Today 's artist 
has obligations that the artist of twenty years 
ago knew nothing of; for that reason he has no 
control over the past and no experience that 
parallels the work of tomorrow's artist who 
will live in and by himself, will permit no com- 
parisons except with himself, and, unless in se- 
vere need, will not communicate with outside 
persons. 

It is very diffìcult to fìnd a painter who thinks, 
and now is the time to write finis to the old 
fable that an artist needs only a good eye! The 
only painter who sees well is he who thinks 
well! In truth only the painter who thinks well 
becomes aware of the phenomena I have called 
the higher barbarisms that nowadays make so 
very diffìcult the artist's struggle to have his 
work understood. 

We have, for example, a public that asks the 
painter to express gaiety and frivolity, that wants 
delight and enjoyment along with the aspira- 
tions typical of a great decadent civilization . . . 
and the truly modem artist feels that life around 
him dictates only expressions of painful fury, 
of anguished yearning, of morbid curiosity. 

A public that calls for joy like some sixteenth- 
century lord, and a painter who responds with 
the soul of a modernized Giotto. 

A public that wants light, hygiene, sunlit sur- 



233 




Boccioni in Rome, 1901. 
Photo: Luciano Pollini. Courtesy 
private archive, Padua 



roundings more open than crowded, yet hangs 
on its walls the gloomiest daubs found in sec- 
ondhand shops or the studios of complacent 
fakers. 

A public that travels by automobile and air- 
piane through and above the immobile quiet of 
old cities geared to the slow pace of sedan chair 
or litter. A public that chatters about revolu- 
tion, strikes, and spiritualist séances, and when 
it comes to artistic values wants to be served 
on sixteenth-century plates in eighteenth- 
century gardens, with wigs or pagan nudities, 
tranquillity and moonlight. . . . How can a think- 
ing person explain the clash of these tendencies, 
so disparate, that trouble the modem intellec- 
tual world? 

Only thus: that culture has cast a veil over 
feeling, has wagered on the law of extremes, 
on the humanity of a higher barbarism, but stili 
relatively barbarie. 

Everybody today, and this is perhaps a fun- 
damental aspect of our epoch, everybody thinks 
of culture as a refuge from the pain of life. 
From this comes an atmosphere of skeptical re- 
gret that is suffocating us! Those who find no 
satisfaction in modem artistic manifestations 
look backward, lamenting the unique genius, 



the lofty and solitary peak surrounded by des- 
ert, sighing and dreaming of Michelangelo and 
Phidias. . . . Those who find no satisfaction in 
new philosophical concepts of life look back- 
ward too, lamenting the waning of the Church,of 
dogmas and strict religious sentiment, the [old] 
choice between humbling the body or the 
triumph of the senses, and they dream of the 
Christian world and the pagan world. Those 
who find no satisfaction in modem politicai and 
social ideals look backward, fantasizing on Sol- 
omon's wisdom, Caesar's iron-fisted law, the 
Sun King's splendors, Napoleoni great exploits. 
I could cite a hundred examples of the morbid 
malaise, the nostalgie discontent of these cul- 
tural degenerates, of these delicate spirits ripe 
for the dynamite in our atmosphere. What is 
sad today is the impossibility of loving the world 
that surrounds us, the life we live, the new 
ideals that guide us. 

Especially for us Italians, everything mod- 
em is synonymous with ugliness. Milan and 
other Italian cities, which instead of the usuai 
old traditions have a marvelous present and fu- 
ture in industry and art, are spoken of as some- 
thing horrendous. To a Venetian, Fiorentine, 
or Roman the modem movement is an aberra- 
tion that must be fled from after first deriding or 
deploring it. Colorful and excited crowds seem 
monstrous to the Italian who has spent his noble 
existence discoursing on past grandeurs of the 
Patria in his dear little city — once a capital, no 
doubt — its quiet streets so full of glorious 
ghosts, closed old palaces, closed gardens, closed 
minds. 

The factories ever roaring and unsleeping give 
chills to the Italian who has spent a lifetime of 
study and admiration on the last capital in the 
back on the right in some palace or other, or 
on the second arcade on the left in some church, 
a national monument. . . . 

The railroad stations and the iron tracks, so 
black and so inexorable with their whistles and 
puffs of smoke, excite horror! Much better to 
enjoy the sunset on a bench in the Pincio or the 
shade of an allée in the Boboli Gardens while 
discussing how to mobilize our troops in 
twenty-four hours on the Austrian frontier or 
repeating for the thousandth time [a performance 
at] the Liston of Piazza San Marco! It is pre- 
cisely this Constant, ignoble antagonism between 
past and present that is responsible for our po- 
liticai, social, artistic feebleness! 

Our fathers liberated us with their blood from 
the foreign yoke, our professors deliver us back 
to it morally manacled by the national monu- 
ment [the grandiose monument in Rome to 



King Vittorio Emanuele II completed in 1911], 
slaves offered up to nostalgie foreigners. It is 
against the mental cowardice of officiai artists 
that our Futurist works do battle, against that 
culture, against that tradition. 

It is culture that defends the Greeks and Mi- 
chelangelo against impressionism in sculpture. 
It is culture that defends the clear contours of 
the Quattrocento and the Cinquecento shad- 
ows against the luminous atmosphere of mod- 
em painting, against Divisionism, and against 
the psychological synthesis of human types that 
our epoch alone has created. It is culture that 
defends the immobile and the static against 
movement and dynamism in painting. And to 
ali of that we say: Bastai Enough! 

When we declared that the painter who has a 
sincere modem temperament must be endowed 
inevitably with what we called congenital com- 
plementarism, howls of indignation and protest 
were raised against this affirmation; it was called 
an assault on individuai liberty, a piece of non- 
sense, a restriction, a new academicism. The 
gale passed and now people are beginning to 
understand the truth of what we affirmed: Di- 
visionism is not a technique! Divisionism is an 
attitude of the spirit, a stage at which human 
sensibility has arrived, a way of translating — it 
is the style of an epoch! 

To the usuai vulgar objection as to whether 
we sincerely see things as spots, dots, lines, we 
can only reply with the old axiom: Art is not the 
copy of Nature. The higher art raises itself, the 
more distant it becomes from Nature, and the 
more profound the artist, the more his subjec- 
tive vision — that is, the world itself — is hope- 
lessly unrecognizable at its first appearance. 

The masterworks the world has admired till 
now will never be found in real life. . . . Marble 
or bronze statues do not look like men of flesh 
and blood. Heads violently illuminated amid 
dark shadows as Rembrandt and the Italian ten- 
ebrists saw them, seemed true in their time, 
but will never be seen or ever were seen in any 
house or piazza, just as no one ever saw or ever 
will see eyes like the Empress Theodora's [at 
Ravenna] or flesh touched with gold like [that 
of Rembrandt's] Flora. What the public ad- 
mires in the old pictures — the splendor of the 
flesh, the fusion of tonalities, the warmth of 
coloring — would in real life signify gloom, filth, 
chlorosis, putrefaction! The world is mere out- 
ward appearance. The real world is within us, 
and the artist leaves ten thousand worlds be- 
hind him before becoming one with the world 
that resembles himself. 



234 



Therefore, Divisionism, that attitude of the 
spirit, is as valid for us as the modeled form 
was for the Greeks and Romans, mosaic for 
the Byzantines, clear contours for the [Quattro- 
cento] Primitives, synthetic chiaroscuro for the 
Cinquecento artists. And precisely because we 
believe complementarism to be an attitude of 
the spirit, it must be inborn in the modem 
painter. This divides us absolutely from the Ital- 
ian Divisionists of yesterday for whom (given 
their culture) that truth was only grafted onto 
a trunk already old. 

Those theorists, in fact, instead of using Di- 
visionist perception as we do, looked at the 
world through conventional eyes (that is, as 
culture had formed them), and then artificially 
applied the theory of complementary colors. 
Methodically distributing on the canvas equal 
amounts of a color and its complementary, and 
forcing themselves to find the so-called intona- 
tion, they ended up instead by completely de- 
stroying everything through pure color. . . . 
They believed they could remake the practice 
of painting with what was correct in chemical 
practice. And because the union of two colors 
that are complementary in the spectrum pro- 
duces white light in nature, they thought the 
union of two complementary colors in paint 
ought to give the same result on canvas. Previati 
observes in his book on the scientific principles 
of Divisionism that red and blue-green light in 
the spectrum produce white light when united 
but give only an opaque gray when translated 
into colored substances such as vermilion and 
emerald green. Greenish yellow and violet are 
complementary and ought to give white light, 
but the corresponding colors in paint produce 
only a sorry-looking reddish-grayish green; an 
even worse gray comes from combining or- 
ange paint with indigo, another pair of colors 
which in combination are transformed into 
white light in the spectrum. They [the Division- 
ists] did not realize that the colored molecules 
that form white light are different from those 
in the colored substances we use for painting. 
They did not stop to think that the mixing of 
two colored substances does not result in a 
chemical transformation, consequently not in 
a molecular system that would absorb light in 
a unified manner; the absorbent faculties of each 
color remain active, and since every absorp- 
tion means a subtraction of light, which is 
equivalent to saying it tends toward black, any 
mixture of two colored substances must bring 
about a doublé subtraction of light, a doubling 
of darkness. 

They believed they could save the day by plac- 



ing two complementary colors dose to each 
other instead of mixing them. But with this 
procedure, which was the very basis of their 
Divisionism, they ended by making the same 
visual rather than material impression, and the 
dirty color, though slightly attenuated, persisted. 

In such an entirely intuitive field as art, this 
rigid application of a scientific procedure pro- 
duced oppressive grays, monotony, embalmed 
objects, and discouragement in the artists and 
the public. 

We, on the contrary, bring an intuitive disor- 
der in distributing our colors that agrees with 
the explicable dìsorder in the universe, and we 
achieve results having new value in technique 
and feeling! To put mixed colors on the canvas 
means to lose 75 percent in luminosity, in com- 
parison with using pure colors. Now, an artist 
cannot be indifferent to that loss, feeling the 
imperious need within himself to make his own 
work come alive in perfect response to his own 
time. 

How can one understand a painting that de- 
lights in gloom when humanity is preparing to 
fly into the sun? Everything in the modem con- 
sciousness aspires to luminosity! In its love for 
light our epoch shows its primitive stage, since 
it is exactly in primitive epochs that one finds 
this character of luminosity, of synthesis, of sim- 



plicity, in contradistinction to the contrived and 
complicated techniques of decadent eras. 

Another battle being fought today is between 
the cultural attitude of the public and the mod- 
em picture which almost always has a blue and 
violet tonality. 

This general tonality is looked on as degen- 
erative, always bewailed for the absence of our 
old masters' golden mellowness, the precious 
warmth of their browns, the knowing satura- 
tion of their greens, the somber intensity of their 
crimsons. . . . As always, culture, atavism, and 
memory — in short, the Museum — superimpose 
themselves on our developing perception of the 
world as pure and spiritual, and now trans- 
formed by the conquest of air. This sensitivity 
to atmosphere characterizes modem painting 
and thus fosters the blue and the violet to which 
the retinas of people were formerly not sensi- 
tive, just as they had not conquered electricity 
though undoubtedly it existed. The public com- 
plains of the violent colors, dissonances, in- 
harmonics, without stopping to think that our 
eyes and our visual enjoyment are stili crude 
and barbarous compared with those of the fu- 
ture, when the picture as we know it, with its 
infantile immobile materiality, will no longer 
suffice once ever more numerous colors will 




express feelings in and for themselves quite 
beyond the control of forms. 

No one who is a true artist will doubt that 
his own technique is an emanation of his own 
spirit and that in Divisionism our time is fìnd- 
ing its spiritual expression. 

It is a fact that the dotting, the tiny brush- 
strokes, and the streaking that horrify the par- 
tisans of superficial facility unquestionably give 
a greater expressive and communicative force 
to painting, because every sign however tiny 
bears the imprint of the individuai who made 
it. And from this it follows that we are supe- 
rior verists since we imitate intuitively the pro- 
cedure of light rays striking bodies and coloring 
them. This is the only way we conceive the 
imitation of Nature. 

In opting for Divisionism we despise such 
vulgar tricks as taking advantage of irregulari- 
ties in the grain of the canvas, or the strange 
accidents of liquids, varnishes, glazes, and pa- 
tinas; ali these artificial means can be relied on to 
produce vulgar and superficial effects and, as I 
said, characterize paintings in a decadent period. 

It is logicai that those who profit from such 
means should continually renounce that beau- 
tiful, intentional, personal aspiration which 
obliges us, for our part, to connect almost math- 
ematically the smallest dot on the canvas, every 
stroke of the brush however negligible, with 
the global synthesis of the picture as a whole. 

To confuse the great inner vision of the true 
artist with the so-called broad technique would 
be absurd, for this is purely external and de- 
serves only contempt, based on the acrobatic 
dexterity of those who boast of turning out a 
picture with twenty strokes of the brush. To 
me it seems quite unnecessary to demonstrate, 
for example, that Segantini, through smooth- 
ing down and dotting, has an immensely more 
ampie and profound technique than the well- 
known broad technique of Zorn. 

And so it is that Divisionism, like polyphony 
in music, like a stanza orchestrated in freé verse 
in poetry, represents an effort of greater inten- 
sity and artistic complexity, a vehement aspira- 
tion toward what we cali the symphonic and 
polychromatic unity of the picture that becomes 
ever more a universal synthesis. 

We have been accused, wrongly, of being noth- 
ing more than new Impressionists. I am anx- 
ious to clarify this point so as to establish the 
difference, the abyss, that separates us from the 
French Impressionists and the new Post-Im- 
pressionists who, through Cézanne, Van Gogh, 
Gauguin, and Denis, are now led by Matisse, 



Picasso, and others. These last-named, who have 
made such a sensation in France and most re- 
cently at the Grafton Gallery in England, are 
together with the Slavs the link joining us and 
the Impressionists. 

But if the Post-Impressionists have risen above 
the accidental analytical reproduction of Na- 
ture (and not ali of them have done so), if, with 
admirable audacity, they make much of avoid- 
ing the distinctive episode that was the Impres- 
sionists' hallmark, and if they have felt the need 
for synthesis and the necessity of style — some- 
thing the great personalities among the Impres- 
sionists left no trace of — their quest for style 
shows them desiring a school and a tradition, 
and makes them worshipers of the great mas- 
ters with whom they believe they can drink 
together from the great springs of Art. Ali of 
this leads them back to an archaic primitivism 
that vaunts a barbarous inexperience, a clumsy 
immobility, an absolute disdain for symphonic 
fusions — ali to the benefit of the fiat tints and 
contours by now grown tiresome. True enough, 
they have sensed Manet's grand truth, that only 
by making himself primitive can the artist be- 
come great and originai, but they have drawn 
the wrong conclusions from it. . . . They have 
understood that painting aspires to the apogee 
of large-scale decoration and that the drawing 
of children, illiterates, and the insane is infinitely 
superior to ali the magniloquences of the officiai 
painting of our day and the past, but in their 
anxiety (sincere, to be sure) for structure they 
have imitated Giotto's primitive forerunners and 
followers, the drawings of cavemen and of 
savages — in short, whatever in the world is most 
ingenuous and rudimentary. 

They have not understood that every epoch 
has its primitives, that if we want to war against 
the higher barbarism of culture we must pit 
against them the higher primitivism of a genu- 
inely modem intuition. Fifty years from now 
our black, grimy, noisy, slow, imperfect loco- 
motives will seem barbarous and primitive, yet 
they certainly represent a notable superiority 
of development and complexity of aspirations 
when compared with the stagecoach, horse, or 
just plain nothing of five hundred years ago. 

The primitivism of the Post-Impressionists 
looks back to the past in its love for the crudely 
rendered nude, its lifeless and useless stili lifes, 
its mystico-Catholic subjects, its willfully in- 
genuous forms hieratically mummifìed. We, 
however, feeling ourselves the primitives of a 
new epoch, act accordingly in our deliberate 
choice of subjects and our unconditional refusai 
to repeat those already exhausted. 



We keep away from the countryside, for ex- 
ample, linked to it by few nostalgie memories, 
by now scarcely viable, and seek our symbols 
in the city and in its life, which is foolishly called 
artificiaL 

Night life, with its women and men marvel- 
ously bent on forgetting their daytime life; the 
panting factories that incessantly produce wealth 
for the powerful; the geometrical city landscapes 
enameled with gemstones, mirrors, lights: Ali 
of this creates around us an unexplored atmo- 
sphere that fascinates us, and into it we fling 
ourselves to conquer the future! Ali in ali, in 
our art we give importance to everything that 
forgets the past and the present to aspire toward 
the future. Only becoming — moving forward 
— has value for us! If we take our distance from 
the Post-Impressionists, ali the more reason to 
move away from the French Impressionists, ex- 
actly because we as children of our time, have 
gone beyond them by naturai evolution. 

The Impressionists, whom I have called sci- 
entific temperaments, were the real initiators 
of the break with the past. After their arrivai a 
new light colored the world. They recreated 
it and labored throughout their existence to 
discover new elements that our epoch has made 
its own, because on these, as on new founda- 
tions, would rise the luminous edifice of the 
future Aesthetic. 

They were compelled to experiment in their 
works with the new ways of seeing that they 
tore away from the world. However much these 
experiments had the winged character of a song, 
it was logicai that they remained in a partial 
state, objective and almost impassive, that the 
search for the means and the nature of the 
method, completely experimental, imposed on 
them. Reproducing the truth was for them not 
a means toward constructing a lyrical inner vi- 
sion; it was the aim in itself, the picture itself, 
in which converged a thousand treasures of lov- 
ing observation. . . . 

With the Impressionists, nonetheless, stones, 
pine woods, animals begin to change form, di- 
mensions, color. However timidly, their figures 
arid their objects are already the nucleus of an 
atmospheric vibration: Pure reality brings into 
the picture lines and forms overlooked until now, 
perhaps never seen; the overall tonality, through 
the abolition of black and the use of comple- 
mentary colors and violet, has changed com- 
pletely. To avoid the conventional and academic 
pictorial construction they completely banned 
historical or literary or fantastic subjects and 
compositions, in short ali precious manifesta- 
tions of subjectivity. With this the artist — that 



236 



marvelous being — seems to be destroying him- 
self to become merged and identified with na- 
ture, and to survive only through bringing forth 
the revelation of new mysteries. But this over- 
ambitious sacrifice brought with it necessarily 
an almost complete absence of style. 

True, they tried to sing of new aspects of 
contemporary life, but the quest for new means 
so preoccupied them that their song ceased 
on the surface. They heaped detail on detail, 
but no law disciplined their canvases; they mis- 
took appearance for reality; they subjected light 
to the relativity of the hour and the fleeting 
moment instead of seeing it as absolute idea. 
Preoccupied with seizing tone in its immedi- 
acy, they subjugated themselves to ali the acci- 
dents of time and place and reproduced swiftly 
passing and fragmentary scenes, fatally relegat- 
ing their great innovations to the purely formai 
domain. The emotion their works give off is 
limited and relative, dependent on the viewer's 
own experience; and the execution of the works 
provides a large part of their value. In short, 
they reproduced almost without discrimination 
whatever passed before their eyes, limpid and 
serene as those of science itself, and their scru- 
pulously weighed and controlied works have 
not that outcry, longing, and passion that set 
colors afìre and do violence to form! That pas- 
sion that makes a work hypnotize, grip, and 
engross us, sweeping us into infinity! 

Our kind of impressionism, on the contrary, is 
absolutely spiritual, since it seeks to render, more 
than any optical and analytical impression, the 
psychic and synthetic impression of a thing. 
With us, there occurs none of that uncoupling 
that leaves anemie almost ali the pictures now 
publicly exhibited, no first impression then sub- 
jected to cultural dictates, to the means used, 
and to ali the accidental factors that surround 
us in life. Instead, the impression itself is trans- 
lated onto the canvas stripped of those lifelike 
details which may sometimes reward the painter 
as craftsman but always work to the detriment 
of the ultimate aim of art: emotion. We wish 
to attain, and are attaining, what is eternai in 
the impression, not the impression as execu- 
tion arrested at approximate reproduction but 
as the sensation of the thing, grasped and 
defined in its essential lines. 

The Impressionists intuited that to sweep 
away the culture intruding between the vision 
and the execution, what was needed was im- 
mediacy, that is, unity in creation. But placing 
themselves in front of real things brought them 
impressions that were outward and fragmen- 



tary rather than inward and definitive. 

The myopic critics are surprised to find that 
the principles we are preaching in Italy are ai- 
ready partly known in other countries; many 
of our own attitudes, too, would be ali but use- 
less in France, Germany, Scandinavia, Amer- 
ica. Those critics should come to see that in 
Italy there has not yet been any truly modem 
painting except for Segantini, Pelizza, Previati, 
ali neglected if not completely ignored by the 
broad Italian public. Let them get it into their 
heads that since Tiepolo, with the above ex- 
ceptions and an occasionai artist in the group 
called the Macchiaioli, there has not been a sin- 
gle picture that is worth the most mediocre 
sketch by any of the artists who flourished in 
France from Manet to Gauguin, from Puvis de 
Chavannes to Maurice Denis. And I have named 
Segantini, Pelizza, and Previati because we con- 
sider them the last great figures of a time now 
dead. Indeed, if criticism were to go deeper stili, 
I would have to say that if Segantini has finally 
become so widely admired, abroad especially, 
it is thanks to his dose kinship with Millet, to 
his backwardness in expressing himself, and to 
his conception of a picture, stili quite panoramic 
and traditional in the elements that make it up. 

Previati, however, is truly the first to attempt 
to express by means of light itself a new emo- 
tion outside of the conventional reproduction 
of forms and colors. He cuts some of the innu- 
merable ties that connect us to the past and to 
the future as well. With him, forms commence 
to speak like music, solid bodies aspire to be- 
come atmosphere and spirit, and the subject is 
ripe to transform itself into state of mind. 

And so, with the mention of musical forms, 
spiritual volumes, and the state of mind as the 
subject, I have arrived at the nucleus of Futur- 
ist painting. 

First let me say that we think the true mod- 
em artist can only paint the invisible, cloaking 
it in the lights and shadows that emanate from 
its own soul. If our adversaries were not moti- 
vated purely by provincialism, mediocrity, and 
fear of innovation, they would understand ali 
the transfigurations that light brings to solid 
bodies, ali the immateriality that things and an- 
imals undergo in light's colored vibrations; they 
would understand the symbolic signifìcance of 
our famous phrase about the divàns that enter 
into us and the horses' legs that multiply. The 
usuai public that considers itself interested in 
art applies to our work its old idea of a picture 
as panorama and perspective and neither thinks 
nor understands that in modem life nothing is 
contemplated at length, as in the past; that the 



sun itself is shattered into tiny fragments in the 
incandescent light of electric bulbs and the glit- 
ter of steel; that in the conditions of velocity 
that we live in the objects around us are in con- 
tinuai flight, made fluid, stretched to infinity, 
existing only as luminous apparitions; that the 
radiant fusion between environment and fig- 
ures gives to a modem picture a musical value 
never achieved before. 

In our epoch, in which distances, heights, 
and depths are disappearing, the volume and 
opacity of solid bodies have become only old 
lies. Those who say that we perceive through 
our five senses are repeating an old fable: Our 
senses have become as multiple as our pores 
and have so interpenetrated each other that who- 
ever speaks of painting, music, poetry, archi- 
tecture as separate entities is repeating rancid 
scholastic formulas grown old and cold. We Fu- 
turists have progressed beyond ali that and ai- 
ready we intuit the future millennia. 

Today, with our lives becoming shorter and 
more intense, mobility and velocity have taken 
the place of the fixed and static and the present 
exists only as a transition to the future; what 
we have called pictorial dynamism is one of the 
most brilliant artistic intuitions of our time. We 
want physical forces to be diffused into the en- 
vironment and to superpose and flood over one 
the other like vibrations, caught in the vortex 
of those vibrations that together intensify the 
overall light in a painting. 

As regards dynamism, for instance, we say 
that gestures have been depicted until now in 
only the moment of their action, or at most in 
a synthesis of gesture that amounts to one ges- 
ture summing up the many. We, on the con- 
trary, shall give visible form to the will that 
brings about the movement, the sensation of 
the gesture, that is, the gesture in the act of 
making itself visible. And to cite an example 
from another Futurist painter, my good and 
great friend Carlo Carrà, I will teli you that 
when we paint, say, a man riding a bicycle at 
high speed we will strive to reproduce the in- 
stinct of dash that determines the act itself, not 
the racer's physical appearance in action. It does 
not bother us that the racer's head might im- 
pinge on the profile of the wheel or his body 
become elongated, lost behind him in infinite 
vibrations as an apparent optical error, because 
it is the sensation of the race, not the racer, that 
we aim to render. In short, our Futurist hyper- 
sensibility guides us, endowing us already with 
that sixth sense that science struggles in vain to 
catalogue and define. In us it has already taken 
form. For us ali values are gone, ali laws over- 



237 



come, ali chains broken. The artist's individu- 
ality, now free at last, lives in the eternai 
absolute. 

So far I have limited my talk to explaining a 
few of the ideas on forms and colors that ap- 
peared in the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Paint- 
ing. I have not yet explained our true beliefs 
concerning Futurist painting: that is, how we 
believe that the finality of forms and colors, 
their ultimate aims, apply to the true Futurist 
spirit. 

To express any idea of sorrow, the painter 
always resorted, until today, to reproducing the 
scene, the site, or the thing that gave rise to it. 
The development of this concept was first given 
visible form in the objective manner, by copy- 
ing a particularly sorrowful face; thus sadness 
was not yet conceived as something in itself 
but only as it manifested itself to our senses; in 
the subjective manner, however, diverse ele- 
ments or attributes of sorrow were synthesized 
into a symbol, which meant that the artist was 
moving toward a free subjective concept. But 
even in this higher form the human figure was 
always formally reproduced, as, for example, 
in Dùrer's engraved Melancholia or Michelan- 
gelo's fresco of the prophet Jeremiah. In time 




Umberto Boccioni, ca. 1913-14. 
Photo: Electa Editrice, Milan 



the objective approach itself also became uni- 
versalized; that is, as the artist's comprehen- 
sion broadened he realized that beyond his own 
sorrow there was the sorrow of things, of 
plants, of the atmosphere, and thus was born 
the landscape with ali its derivatives. However, 
this progress toward liberation from what is 
fixed and determined — this forward step taken 
in our day — remains nonetheless an objective 
expression which will be left behind. How will 
the outside world, present and future, rise 
through our painting to a universal, subjective 
expression? 

It will be sensation that must suggest to the 
painter states of color and states of form, so that 
forms and colors will become expressive in 
themselves, without recourse to the formai rep- 
resentation of objects. It will be through emo- 
tion that these objects will dictate the rhythm 
of signs and the abstract color scales which will 
become the new form and the new color and 
will speak to the eye like music to the ear. 

What will the Futurist painting look like that 
intuits and proposes ali this? What will we put 
on our canvases, we for whom solid bodies are 
only atmosphere condensed and minerals, 
plants, animals of that same nature? What will 
our plastic treatment be like, if we consider it 
puerile to reproduce the quality of the material 
and wish to convey the utmost spirituality with 
the utmost of painting, that is, visual sensation? 

Only that painting will be Futurist whose col- 
ors represent and communicate a sentiment with 
the least possible recourse to the solid forms 
that gave rise to it. If the Greeks and Michel- 
angelo have given the type of what is solid, and 
human, we will render sensation as the type of 
the spirit. 

If it has been said by Watts that he painted 
ideas, which comes down to applying traditional 
forms and colors to purely literary and philo- 
sophical visions, we reply that we paint sensa- 
tion, because we wish to remain consistently 
within the domain of painting. In point of fact, 
in painting the pure sensation we dose off the 
idea before it becomes localized in one particu- 
lar sense and determines itself as either music, 
poetry, painting, or architecture. But we rise 
again to the first universal sensation which our 
Futurist spirit already perceives, as I have said, 
thanks to the multiplicity and interpenetration 
of ali the senses in a single universal which makes 
us return, across our millennial complexity, to 
primordial simplicity! 

We are truly on the farthest promontory of 
the centuries! Having arrived at that point, the 
artist's mind is inevitably led to deny the past. 



And the more profound the enslavement of his 
love for the past, the sharper will be his denial. 
In fact, there being no perfect understanding 
without identifying what is understood, Mi- 
chelangelo could be denied only by some sub- 
limely ignorant man in the future or by one 
who rebels against him for having worshiped 
him overmuch. It is truly painful to turn away 
from and deny that genius who in the past was 
the greatest abstract artist to express himself 
by means of the concrete! 

With Michelangelo, anatomical science is 
transformed into music. With him the human 
body is architectonic matter for the construc- 
tion of dreams. Bodies are moved beyond logie 
because the muscles' melodie lines follow upon 
one another by laws of music, not by repre- 
sentational laws of logie. 

We must go beyond ali that! We have gone 
beyond that first infantile stage when the artist 
took note of some individuai — some chance fact 
struck his eye and he experienced it in reality, 
which meant that his work of art had the ap- 
pearance of a particular episode. And we have 
gone beyond the second stage, in which the 
artist raised his sights and, though remaining 
at the center of his vision, broadened his com- 
prehension to take in other things and other 
beings; his work of art appears as a universal 
episode. We are entering the third stage, the 
Futurist era, in which a new and boundless con- 
ception governs the world. The artist himself 
now disappears, certainly not from humility or 
terror but because his spirit is identified with 
that of the world; he is revealed within a whole 
through pure forms and pure colors denoting 
the different states of mind that have become 
the breath of the universal soul. That is why 
our art will never depict a beloved person or 
love of the world but will render love itself, 
certainly not as outside ourselves like an ab- 
stract idea but in ourselves and for ourselves 
through sensation. Thus our art, which could 
be termed physical transcendentalism, is born 
from the contemplation of Nature, through a 
completely modem emotion that may seem a 
fantasy, yet is a new reality! 

And so, if solid bodies give rise to states of 
mind by means of vibrations of forms, then 
we will draw those vibrations. Veloci ty will thus 
be something more than an object in swift mo- 
tion, and we will perceive it as such: We will 
draw and paint velocity by rendering the ab- 
stract lines that the object in its course has 
aroused in us. Every verification with the out- 
side world must end up in the created work. 
The colors should not correspond with the ob- 



238 



jects because these latter are never themselves 
colored; this higher realism has generateci this 
truth: If objects appear colored more or less 
according to the emotion that invests them, 
why not paint the sensation these variations 
arouse? The sanie can be saìd of forms: If an 
object never has a fixed forni but varies accord- 
ing to the emotion of whoever contemplates 
it, why should we not draw, instead of the ob- 
ject, the rhythm raised in us by that variation 
in dimensions? 

A space filled with vibrations separates the 
physical body from that invisible which deter- 
mines the nature of the body's action and will 
dictate the artistic sensation. In the end, if 
around us roam spirits impalpable, invisible, 
and unhearable that will increasingly be stud- 
ied and observed — fluids of power, antipathy, 
love that issue from our bodies, deaths that can 
be foreseen from hundreds of miles away, pre- 
sentiments that overwhelm us with joy or pros- 
trate us with sorrow — ali this is because within 
us some marvelous sense is awakening into the 
light of our consciousness. Sensation is the ma- 
terial covering of the spirti, and it is now appear- 
ing to our prophetic eyes. And, with this, the 
artist feels himself in ali things. In creating he 
does not look, observe, or measure: He senses, 
— and the sensations that envelop him dictate 
the lines and the colors aroused by the emo- 
tions that impelled him to act. 

Dynamism in painting! And to ali sterile and 
repugnant culture we cry: basta! enough! 

Selected Notes by Boccioni for the 
Lecture on Futurist Painting 

The first symptoms of revolution come with 
the Englishlandscapists, Bonington, Reynolds, 
Constable, Turner, from whom derive Camille 
Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Dubigny [sic], etc, 
then Courbet, Millet, Daumier, then Manet, 
Monet, and ali the Impressionists after 1860. 

From the beginning of the nineteenth century 
Precursors Monticelli, Delacroix 
Georges Seurat, systematic initiator of Divi- 

sionism around 1886, died young aged thirty 

in '91 

Naturalistic synthetists Cézanne . . . , Van 
Gogh, Gauguin, Neo-idealist synthetists Rosi- 
crucians, etc. 

Gauguin who worked against Impressionism 
used to say that a half pound of red gives less 
color than a pound of red. This proves that to 
get color you have to increase the [amount of] 
color, and that strict application of Divisionist 



ideas about complementary colors leads to a 
decrease in intensity down to gray. We have that 
in Segantini, in Fornara, in Vittore Grubicy. Ce- 
rebral Impressionists. 

Complementarism of color in the general mass 
and complementarism of tone in the construc- 
tion of color. A light yellow close to a dark 
one and so on, up to three or four gradations 
of yellow or violet or green. Creates a decom- 
position of the tone, introduces into it a satu- 
ration and intensity of the color to which it is 
added. A yellow becomes extremely yellow and 
likewise red becomes extremely red. 

What the genius lacks is intelligence. The ge- 
nius has no need of that intelligence which is 
the binding tie, equilibrium. In many minds 
the flashes of inspiration are genial, but for that 
sudden flash to become light, intelligence must 
be correspondingly weak, and not interfere with 
its common sense, its limitations. Intelligence 
is relative, genius absolute. 

A marvelous reversai is coming about in us. 
While art was once spontaneous and everyday 
work, it is an effortful endeavor with us and 
cannot adapt itself to the needs of life. Exam- 
ple: medicine with animai intuiting cures. Per- 
haps new barbarism? 

If science were to replace intuition, what art 
would be possible? 

The Idea is the prime intuition. The idea is the 
essence of the real. Is everything, is what is 
eternai, is in itself and is not variable. 

Everything inexplicable to man became idea. 
Whence so many phenomena, so many ideas. 
The idea took concrete form, not understood 
in itself in time and in space. In time, the higher 
concrete form became God; in space, became 
King. Then religiosity took the place of God, 
the state replaced King. In the latter, up to the 
ultimate expression of socialism; in the former, 
up to the ultimate expression of the divine. In 
ali this there is stili servitude. 

A propos painting 

Is a new color scale something originai? Does 
musicality depend on that? Is the subject, the 
idea, possible in a painting that envisages what 
is possible to it as the intensified scale? New 
Academy? I thought one day. Perplexity? Is mu- 
sicality possible with tragedy, when tragedy 
must be the ultimate aim? Music would then 
become means, like painting. In painting is a 
literary tendency in manifest opposition to one 
that is musical? 

The tragedy of Hamlet, what would it be in 
music? 




Boccioni's palettes in his studio, 1912. 
Photo: Electa Editrice, Milan 



The painting of the invisible 
What needs to be painted is not the visible but 
what has hitherto been held to be invisible, that 
is, what the clairvoyant painter sees. This will 
be naturai for the future; today it may seem only 
effort and craze for novelty. 

An infmity of values have come into being, 
an infmity of laws. 

Humanity has become adult and therefore 
philosophical. The scientific era of our day is 
equivalent to the efforts the first men must have 
made to understand the world by storing things 
up in their minds. Today it is art that sings myth. 

And the cause of the phenomenon? Must 
think about this. 

Uncertainty weighs on the conscience of mod- 
em artists. 

Social revolution Symbolism 

Love for the great masters, for tradition; 
abolition of the personality, of originality, 
laws of eternai perfection so as to create in 
opposition. 

Instead of the voice, we will paint the echo. 
Colored gases of the future. Intensity and ve- 
locity of life. Future vision, geometrical, chemi- 
cal. Relation between our time and gothic 
architecture. Preponderance of voids over solids. 

First there was objective synthesis, now it is 
subjective synthesis, that is, universal move- 
ment pinned down. Impressionist error 

Foundering and collapse of materiality with 
greater spiritual result 



239 



TECHNICAL MANIFESTO OF FUTURIST SCULPTURE 

Aprii 11, 1912 



The sculpture in the monuments and exhibi- 
tions of every single city of Europe offers such 
a pitiable spectacle of barbarisms, stupid clum- 
sinesses, and monotonous imitation that my Fu- 
turist eye turns away with profound disgusti 

What dominates in every country's sculpture 
is the blind and dull-witted imitation of the for- 
mulas inherited from the past, an imitation en- 
couraged by the doublé cowardice of slavish 
submission to tradition and of getting by with 
the least effort. In the Latin countries we have 
the infamous heavy hand of Greece and Michel- 
angelo, something endured with a certain seri- 
ousness of mind in France and Belgium but with 
grotesque imbecilism in Italy. In the Germanie 
countries we have an insipid Hellenizing, 
pseudo-Gothic ragbag, cranked out on an in- 
dustriai scale in Berlin or sapped of ali back- 
bone by the effeminate fìnicking of the German 
professorial lot in Munich. In the Slavic coun- 
tries, on the other hand, one fìnds a confused 
collision between the creatures of archaic Greece 
and monsters spawned in the Nordic lands and 



the East: a formless accumulation of influences 
that range from the excess of abstruse details 
typical of Asia to the infantile and grotesque 
inventiveness of Laplanders and Eskimos. 

In ali these manifestations of sculpture, but 
also in those with a somewhat greater breath 
of innovative daring, the same ambiguity is per- 
petuated: The artist copies the nude and studies 
classical statuary with the naive conviction that 
he will be able to light on a style that somehow 
fits the way people feel nowadays, yet without 
straying ever so little from the traditional con- 
ception of sculptural form: a conception, with 
its famous "ideal of beauty" that everyone 
speaks of on bended knee, and that simply never 
breaks away from the period of Phidias and its 
subsequent decadence. 

And it is ali but inexplicable that the thou- 
sands of sculptors who continue from genera- 
tion to generation to turn out their silly puppets 
have, so far, not asked themselves why the 
sculpture halls are vìsited with boredom and 
even revulsion (when they are not simply de- 



serted), and why monuments are inaugurated 
in ali the public squares of the world amid ei- 
ther incomprehension or general hilarity. 

Nothing of the sort happens with painting. 
Thanks to its continuai renewal, slow as it may 
be, painting stands as the most crystal-clear con- 
demnation of the plagiaristic and sterile work 
of every single sculptor of our epoch! 

Somehow the sculptors simply must convince 
themselves of this absolute verity: To go on 
constructing and trying to create with Egyp- 
tian, Greek, or Michelangelesque elements is 
like trying to draw water with a bottomless 
bucket from a dried-up well! 

There can be no renewal whatsoever in an 
art if its very essence is not renewed, that is, 
the vision and conception of the line and of the 
masses that give form to the arabesque. It is 
not merely by reproducing the outward aspeets 
of contemporary life that art can become the 
expression of its own time. Yet sculpture, as it 
has been understood so far by the artists of the 
last and present centuries, is a monstrous 
anachronism! 

Sculpture has not progressed because of the 
very limited field allotted to it by the academic 
concept of the nude. An art that has to undress 
a man or woman to the buff in order even to 
begin to act on our feelings is a dead art! Paint- 
ing, however, has been given a transfusion of 
fresh blood, has deepened and broadened itself 
by letting the landscape and surroundings act 
simultaneously on the human figure or on ob- 
jeets, arriving by those means at our Futurist 
compenetration of planes (Technical Manifesto of Fu- 
turist Painting, Aprii 11, 1910). Sculpture like- 
wise will find a new fountainhead of emotion, 
and therefore of style, but only when it extends 
its plasticity to what our barbarous primitive- 
ness has màde us consider, up to our day, as 
subdivided, impalpable, and consequently not 
expressible through three-dimensional means. 

As point of departure we must proceed from 
the centrai nucleus of the object we wish to 
create, and from that basis discover the new 
laws — that is, the new forms — that link it in- 
visibly but mathematically to the visible plastic 
infinite and to the inner plastic infinite. That new 
plastic art will therefore involve translating the 
atmospheric planes that link and intersect things 
into plaster, bronze, glass, wood, and any other 




240 



material one may wish. This vision, which I 
have called physical transcendentalism (lecture on 
Futurist painting at the Circolo Artistico in 
Rome, May 1911), is capable of rendering in 
three-dimensional forms the attractions and 
mysterious affinities that create the reciprocai 
influences that give form to the planes of the 
objects represented. 

Sculpture must therefore make objects come 
to life by rendering their prolongation into space 
perceivable, systematic, and three-dimensional: 
No one can stili doubt that one object leaves 
off where another begins and that there is noth- 
ing that surrounds our own body — bottle, au- 
tomobile, house, tree, Street — that does not cut 
through it and slice it into cross-sections with 
an arabesque of curves and straight lines. 

There have been two attempts at a modem 
renewal of sculpture: one decorative and con- 
cerned with style, the other simply plastic — 
sculptural — and having to do with material as 
such. The first remained anonymous and dis- 
organized. It lacked any overall technical and 
coordinating spirit, and overly bound up as it 
was with the economie demands of the build- 
ing trades, it produced no more than pieces of 
traditional sculpture more or less decoratively 
synthesized and framed within architectural or 
decorative motifs or moldings. Ali the build- 
ings and houses constructed with a claim to mo- 
dernity provide examples of such efforts carried 
out in marble, cement, or metal plaques. 

The second attempt was more inventive, less 
commercially restricted, and more poetic, but 
it was also too isolated and piecemeal. It lacked 
the synthesizing thinking behind it that could 
impose an overall principle. And this because, 
when embarking on a process of renewal, it is 
not enough to believe with ali one's heart: One 
needs to set up and champion some norm that 
will mark out clearly the path to be taken. I am 
alluding to the genius of Medardo Rosso, to an 
Italian, to the only great modem sculptor who 
has sought to open a vaster field to sculpture 
by rendering in three-dimensional art the 
influences of an environment and the atmo- 
spheric links that bind it to the subject. 

Of the three other great contemporary sculp- 
tors, Constantin Meunier has brought absolutely 
nothing new to the sculptural sensibility. His 
statues are almost always masterly fusions of 
Greek heroics with the athletic humbleness of 
the longshoreman, sailor, miner. His plastic and 
constructional approach to sculpture in the 
round or in low relief is stili tied to the Parthenon 
or the classical hero, though he did attempt for 
the very first time to create and impart an air of 



divinity to subjects that had been disdained or 
left to the cheap sort of realistic reproduction. 

Bourdelle brings to the sculptural block a vir- 
tually irascible severity of feeling for abstractly 
architectonic masses. A passionate, stern, sin- 
cere, creative temperament, he is unfortunately 
incapable of liberating himself from a certain 
archaic influence and from that other, anony- 
mous influence of the swarm of stonecarvers of 
the Gothic cathedrals. 

Rodin is possessed of a vaster spiritual and 
intellectual agility which permits him to move 
from the Impressionism of his Balzac to the ir- 
resolute expressions of his Burghers of Calais and 
to ali his other sins committed in the name of 
Michelangelo. He brings to his sculpture a way- 
ward inspiration, a grandiose lyrical impetus, 
and these would be well and truly modem had 
Michelangelo and Donatello not had them, in 
virtually identical forms, four hundred years 
ago, and if Rodin himself had used them to put 
life into a reality conceived in entirely new 
fashion. 

Thus in the work of these three great ge- 
niuses we have three influences from different 
periods: Greek in Meunier, Gothic in Bourdelle, 
Italian Renaissance in Rodin. 

Medardo Rosso's work, on the contrary, is 
revolutionary, utterly modem, more profound 
though, necessarily, limited. No heroes or sym- 
bols stir his works, but the piane of a woman's 
or child's forehead suggests a liberation into 
space that, when the history of the human spirit 
comes to be written, will be understood as of 
greater importance than has been recognized in 
our time. Unfortunately the Impressionistic ap- 
proach he has been trying out has limited 
Rosso's efforts to a kind of high or low relief, 
which shows that he is stili conceiving the figure 
as a world in itself, on a traditional basis and 
with storytelling intentions. 

Medardo Rosso's revolution, for ali its great 
importance, is rooted in an outwardly pictorial 
concept and neglects the problem of a new con- 
struction of planes. The sensual modeling with 
the thumb is meant to imitate the lightness of 
Impressionist brushwork and does convey a feel- 
ing oflively intimacy. Unfortunately, however, 
it requires a rapid execution working directly 
from life, and this deprives a work of art of a 
feeling of universal creation. Which means that 
it has the same merits and defeets of pictorial 
Impressionism, and if our own aesthetic revo- 
lution grew out of that movement's efforts and 
explorations, it has carried them further and is 
moving, instead, to the opposite pole. 

In sculpture as in painting there can be no 




Umberto Boccioni, Antigracejul (Antigraz- 
ioso), 1912-13. Photo: Arte Fotografica, 
Rome. Courtesy Giuseppe Sprovieri 

renewal except through seeking the style of move- 
ment, that is, through rendering systematic and 
definitive — thus, synthesizing — what Impres- 
sionism offered as fragmentary, accidental, and 
consequently analytical. And it is out of pre- 
cisely that systematization of the vibrations of 
lights and of the interpenetration of planes that 
Futurist sculpture will come into being. The 
basis of that new sculpture will be architectonic, 
not only as regards construction of masses but 
also because the sculptural block will contain 
within itself the architectonic elements of the 
sculptural environment in which the subject has 
its existence. 

The naturai result will be a sculpture of environ- 
ment. 

A Futurist sculptural composition will con- 
tain within itself the kind of marvelous mathe- 
matical and geometrie elements that make up 
the objects of our time. And these objects will 
not be disposed alongside the statue as explan- 
atory attributes or separate decorative elements 
but, in accord with the laws of a new concep- 
tion of harmony, will be embedded in the mus- 
cular lines of a human body. Thus the wheel of 
some piece of machinery might project from a 
mechanic's armpit; thus the line of a table could 
cut right through the head of a man reading; 
thus the book with its fan of pages could slice 
the reader's stomach into cross-sections. 



241 



Traditionally the statue is clearly cut out and 
its forni stands out against the atmospheric back- 
ground of the setting in which it is displayed. 
Futurist painting, for its part, has gone beyond 
that conception of the rhythmical continuity of 
lines in a figure and of the figure as something 
isolated from the background and from the in- 
visible enveloping space. "Futurist poetry," ac- 
cording to the poet Marinetti, "after having 
destroyed traditional meter and created free 
verse, is now destroying syntax and phrases and 
sentences constructed in the Latin manner. Fu- 
turist poetry is an uninterrupted spontaneous 
flow of analogies, each summed up intuitively 
in the essential noun." Whence, "unfettered 
imagination and words in liberty." Balilla 
Pratella's Futurist music shatters the tyrannical 
regular succession of rhythmic beats. 

Why should sculpture have to lag behind, 
fettered by laws no one has the right to impose 
on it? Let us overturn the whole lot of them, 
then, and proclaim the absolute and total aboli- 
tion of the finite line and of the statue complete in 
itself Let us fling open the figure and let it in- 
corporate within itself whatever may surround 
it. We proclaim that the environment must be- 
come part of the sculptural block conceived as 



a world in itself and with its own laws; that the 
sidewalk can climb up on your table and that 
your head can cross the Street while your table 
lamp suspends its spider web of plaster rays of 
light between one house and another. 

We proclaim that the entire visible world must 
come sweeping down on us, become one with 
us, and thereby create a harmony whose only 
guiding principle will be creative intuition; that 
a leg, an arm, or an object — in themselves un- 
important except as elements of the sculptural 
rhythm — can be abolished altogether, not in im- 
itation of a Greek or Roman fragment but so as 
to fit the harmony the author himself aims to 
create. A sculptural entity, in the same way as a 
painting, can only resemble itself, because fig- 
ures and things must have their existence in art 
over and beyond the logie of what objects look 
hke. 

Which means that a figure can have one arm 
clothed and the other bare, and the various lines 
of a vase of flowers can play a nimble game of 
tag between the lines of a hat and a neck. 

And it means that transparent planes, panes 
of glass, sheets of metal, wires, Street lamps, 
or indoor electric lights can indicate the planes, 
tendencies, tones, semitones of a new reality. 



And it means too that a new intuitive color- 
ing of white, gray, black can intensify the emo- 
tional force of the planes, while the introduction 
of a colored piane can violently accentuate the 
abstract significance of the sculpture itself 

What we have said about force-lines in paint- 
ing (preface — manifesto to the catalogue of the 
First Futurist Exhibition in Paris, October 1911) 
is no less pertinent to sculpture where the dy- 
namic force-line can bring life to the static line 
of a muscle. In that line of muscle, however, 
the straight line will predominate because it is 
the only one that matches the inner simplicity 
of the synthesis we counterpose to the outward 
baroque effect that results from analysis. 

But the straight line will not induce us to 
imitate the Egyptians, primitives, and savages, 
as an occasionai modem sculptor has done in a 
desperate attempt to free himself from the 
Greeks. Our straight line will be alive and pal- 
pitating, will lend itself to ali the necessities of 
the infinite expressions of matter, and its fun- 
damental naked severity will symbolize the se- 
verity of steel in the lines of modem machinery. 

We can, to end with, affirm that in sculpture 
the artist should not shrink from any or every 
means that might help achieve a reality. No fear 
is more stupid than that which makes us afraid 
of straying even ever so little from the strict 
confines of the art we practice. There is no such 
thing as painting, as sculpture, as music, as po- 
etry: There is only creation! And so if a sculp- 
tural composition suggests the need for a special 
rhythmic movement that might reinforce or 
contrast with the rhythm fixed within the sculp- 
tural whole (something indispensable in any work 
of art), one can attach to it some sort of con- 
trivance that could impart an appropriate rhyth- 
mic movement to the planes or lines. 

We should not forget that the pendulum and 
rotating spheres in a clock, that the movement 
of a piston in and out of a cylinder, that the 
meshing and unmeshing of two cogwheels with 
the continuous appearing and disappearing of 
their little steel rectangles, that the fury of a 
flywheel, or the whirling of a propeller are ali 
plastic and pictorial elements that a Futurist 
work of sculpture should exploit to the full. 
The opening and closing of a valve creates a 
rhythm no less beautiful but infinitely newer 
than that of an animal's eyelid! 

Conclusions: 

1 . To proclaim that sculpture aims at the ab- 
stract reconstruction of planes and volumes that 
determine forms and not at what they may be 
meant to represent figuratively 




Boccioni's studio in Milan, ca. 1913. Photo: Luciano Pollini. 
Courtesy private archive, Padua 



242 



2. To abolish in sculpture, as in every other 
art, the traditional "sublimity" of the subject 
matter 

3. To deny that sculpture should in any way 
aim at reconstructing real-life episodes, while 
affirming instead the absolute necessity of uti- 
lizing any and every element of reality itself as 
means to return to the essential factors that ac- 
count for plastic sensibility. Thus, by thinking 
of bodies and their parts as plastic zones, we will 
introduce into a Futurist sculptural composition 
planes made of wood or metal, immobile or 
set into motion mechanically, as means of char- 
acterizing an object: hairy spherical forms to 
stand for heads of hair; semicircles of glass for 
a vase; iron wires and netting for an atmospheric 
piane; etc, etc. 

4. To destroy the merely literary and tradi- 
tional "nobility" attributed to marble and 
bronze. To deny that a single material has to 
suffice for the entire construction of a sculp- 
tural ensemble. To assert that even twenty dif- 



ferent materials can be used together in a single 
work where the purpose is to arouse plastic 
emotion. We enumerate a few of these: glass, 
wood, cardboard, iron, cement, horsehair, 
leather, cloth, mirrors, electric lights, etc, etc. 

5. To proclami that in the intersection of the 
planes of a book with the corners of a table, in 
the straight lines of a match, in a window frame, 
there is more truth than in ali the tangles of 
muscles, in ali the full breasts and bulging but- 
tocks of the heroes or Venuses that inspire our 
present-day sculptural idiocy 

6. That it is only out of an utterly modem 
choice of subjects that we can arrive at the dis- 
covery of new plastic ideas 

7. That the straight line is the only means 
that can lead to the primitive virginity of a new 
architectonic structuring of sculptural masses 
or zones 

8. That no renewal can be looked for ex- 
cept through the sculpture of environment, because 
that is the only approach through which sculp- 



ture will develop, prolonging itself into space 
so as to shape and model space itself. Which 
means that, from today on, even clay can be 
used to model the atmosphere that surrounds ali 
things 

9. The thing as we create it is nothing less 
than the bridge between the external plastic infinite 
and the internai plastic infinite, and so objects 
never come to an end in themselves but inter- 
sect with infinite combinations arising out 
of either attraction or collisions 

10. The urgent task is to destroy the system- 
atic recourse to the nude, the traditional con- 
cept of the statue and the monumenti 

11. And therefore we must refuse, coura- 
geously, any and every commission, no matter 
how lucrative, which does not by its nature 
involve a pure construction of sculptural ele- 
ments that have been completely rethought and 
renewed. 

Umberto Boccioni 
Painter and sculptor 



WHAT DIVIDES US FROM CUBISM 

Umberto Boccioni 



The confusion between Futurism and Cubism that 
newspaper critics persist in making, more from 
ignorance than ili will, impels me to clarify and 
emphasize certain differences that set us apart 
from the Cubists. 

It is useless to repeat here what I have writ- 
ten in articles and said in lectures about the es- 
teem we hold for our friends in France, apart 
from the occasionai incompetents. I shall speak 
about their fundamental error according to us 
Futurists: It is a species of inherent flaw, in spite 
of which they have been placed in the avant- 
garde of European painting until today. 

I am using the name Cubism to make it un- 
derstood that I am referring to the group that 
most assiduously exhibits and campaigns under 
that name for a more abstract painting, for a 
new pictorial construction in systematic and vi- 
olent reaction against Impressionism. Actually, 
the name Cubism does not cover a well-defined 
tendency. It started with a light remark by 
Matisse that has become famous because it was 
understood to say what it did not mean to say, 
and today, three years later, the group is falling 
apart and becoming transformed. Around the 
Cubists there are other young painters who ai- 



ready represent a step forward and are prepar- 
ing more advanced and more profound works 
that are completely different, the opposite of 
what the Cubist school really should be turn- 
ing out. 

Before taking up Cubism, however, I must 
speak of Pablo Picasso, without stopping to 
analyze and discuss the priority of the Cubist 
discoveries and the more or less explainable di- 
vergences between him and the Cubists. 

Picasso represents the farthest point in the 
Impressionist renewal. And like ali evolution- 
ary extremes, it is already offering its own ne- 
gation, though a negation that does not manage 
to organize itself. We see in this artist the as- 
sertion of plastic values that was initiated by 
Cézanne carried to its furthest possibility. In his 
latest works the study of form leads him in- 
creasingly toward a fundamental concept based 
on the objective knowledge of reality. Once the 
first surprise has passed, however, one realizes 
that this formai concept is the result of an im- 
passive scientific calibration that destro ys ali dy- 
namic heat, ali violence, and ali incidental variety 
in the forms. But precisely this dynamic heat, 
violence, and incidental variety make the forms 



have a life outside of intelligence and project 
them into the infinite. And this is the result of 
creative emotion, delirious sensation, intuition. 

The scientific calibration I speak of functions 
by way of a rotating point of view that makes 
the artist an analyzer of fixity, an intellectual 
impressionist of pure form. Picasso in fact cop- 
ies the object in its formai complexity, taking it 
apart and numbering its aspects. In doing so, 
he creates for himself an incapacity to experi- 
ence it in its action. And he could not do so be- 
cause his procedure, the enumeration I spoke 
of, arrests the life of the object (motion), sepa- 
rates out the elements that constitute it, and 
redistributes them in the picture according to 
an accidental harmony inherent in the object. But 
the analysis of an object is always made at the 
expense of the object: that is, by killing it. Con- 
sequently, what are extracted are dead elements 
with which no one could ever succeed in com- 
posing a living thing. However much talk goes 
on about a living arabesque and the abstract 
individuality of any and every composition as 
a pure emotive ensemble of planes, volumes, 
and lines, we Futurists proclaim that painting 
marches toward a comprehension of the object 



243 



that is more synthesized and more significane. 

Picasso, we see, by putting a stop to the life 
in the object kills the emotion. The Impressionists 
did much the same with light. They killed it 
by decomposing it into its elements of the spec- 
trum. These phenomena of scientific analysis 
are necessary in regenerating art, but they should 
then be left behind. 

A painting by Picasso lacks laws, lacks lyri- 
cism, lacks personal will. It presents, unfolds, 
throws into confusion, splits into facets, multi- 
plies to infìnity the object's details. The sec- 
tioning of the object and the fantastic variety of 
aspeets a violin, a guitar, a glass can assume in 
his picture astonish us, just like the scientific 
enumeration of the components of an object 
that, out of ignorance or by tradition, we had 
thought of until now as a unified whole. This 
was a fateful discovery, one necessary to art. It 
is the valuable outeome of a refined work but 
is not yet emotion or, at least, is only one as- 
pect of emotion. It is the scientific analysis that 
studies life in a cadaver, that disseets muscles, 
arteries, veins to study their functions and dis- 
cover the laws of creation. But art is already 
creation in itself and has no wish to accumulate 
knowledge. Emotion in art calls for drama. 
Emotion in modem painting and sculpture sings 
of the gravitation, the displacement, the recip- 
rocai attraction of forms, masses, and colors: 
which means movement, and that is the inter- 
pretation of forces. To fix beforehand as its sole 
end the integrai analysis of volumes and physi- 
cal bodies is a dead stop. To continue so, is to 
deliberately create against nature. It is to con- 
ceive the object anew in an immutable abso- 
lute, by now destroyed and banished from our 
conception of life. I repeat what I said in the 
preceding chapter, because this is the key of the 
Dynamism we Italian Futurists have created. 
Today our mental evolution no longer permits 
us to view an individuai or an object isolated 
from its surroundings. In painting and sculpture 
the object does not live out its essential reality 
except as the plastic resultant between object 
and environment. Picasso has set out to ob- 
serve and relate various sides of the object and 
dispose them on the canvas in such a way that 
the forms of the object-environment do par- 
ticipate in it only as chance surrounding ele- 
ments. Toward that end he invented a schematic 
system in which the notions that form its frame- 
work are veiled with the utmost pains in mys- 
tery, and this because they take the bloom off 
the frontiers of art. But they remain nothing 
but notions and therefore are outside of art, 
and consequently outside of emotion. 



To avoid, as he has, the study of the rela- 
tions, of the forces between object and object, 
means to lose the synthesis and motion, thus 
limiting inspiration. The fact is, his picture is 
always the enumeration of the aspeets of a cen- 
trai object, annotated by the various aspeets of 
the surrounding setting — a decidedly traditional 
conception, the rotating point of view not- 
withstanding. 

The object and setting are not viewed as a 
new unity of forces that are contradictory and 
in evolution. Moreover it is impossible to put 
life into two objects, that is, to bring out the 
action of their reciprocai influences, by analyz- 
ing one by one the parts that compose them. 
This higher analysis is a stylization of the ana- 
lytic approach in the northern countrics. Its re- 
sult is analogous, in terms of emotion, to that 
of the old pictures consisting of portrait-fig- 
ures. The objective psychological analysis of 
those figures killed the unity, the fervor, the action, 
which are the fundamental bases of creation in 
an art work. The picture consequently remained 
negative. The increased fìxity that comes from 
analysis makes Picasso lose that sense of vol- 
ume which was one of Cézanne's chief aims. 
Intense analysis of volume has led him, in one 
work to the next, to an abbreviated representa- 
tion of bodies. He has ended by giving the sign, 
the indication, of a form. Instead of volume he 
gives the equivalent formula. And thus, given 
the transparency and malleability of those forms, 
or schemata of forms, it becomes possible to 
multiply them to infìnity. Whence Picasso's 
characteristic, the extremely intricate arabesque. 

One thing is certain: Volume understood as 
some of the Cubists did leads to monumental- 
ity, that is, to the grandiose art of the past, to 
Michelangelo, Raphael, Poussin, David, Ingres, 
etc. ; and Picasso himself hates la grande machine, 
as he himself told me, and scorns it when pro- 
duced by Cubists. He is both wrong and right. 
Right because if one has to fall back on the old 
way of composing images it is better to limit 
oneself to making form for itself alone. He is 
wrong because it is inevitable that, with ele- 
ments of form and color rendered more ab- 
stract than in the old painters, the artist should 
seek to construct a more abstract drama than in 
the past. Indeed I would go so far as to say that 
form and color can take on life only on condi- 
tion of defining themselves in drama — in the 
creative state of mind. 

To be born, to grow, to die: There is the fatal- 
ism that guides us. Not to march toward the 
definitive is to refuse one's share in evolution, 
in death. Everything moves toward catastro- 



phe! And one must have the courage to surpass 
oneself until death; and enthusiasm, fervor, in- 
tensity, and ecstasy are ali aspirations toward 
perfection, that is, the ultimate consummation. 
We must make an end with negations, with the 
terror of realizations. And we must not forget 
that the Futurist revolution is leading art to- 
ward a new, great, definitive epoch, or, as the 
others put it, the classical. . . . 

And for that reason we Futurists champion 
the picture, thence composition and the rules, 
and thence order and scale in the plastic values. 
But for us the picture is not the same as what 
we shall examine of the Cubists: It is not Picas- 
so's or Braque's analytical enumeration, but is 
life itself intuited in its transformations within 
the object, not outside it. 

We are in agreement with Picasso when he 
wishes to destroy painting as such, because we 
also have been working in Italy for several years 
(first isolated, then united in Futurist solidar- 
ity) to destroy ali the old pictorial, idiotic, tra- 
ditional, realistic, decorative, smoke-blackened 
museum stuff; but he deeply errs when he fails 
to recognize that devising abstract elements does 
not lead to an abstract construction. Such construc- 
tion is what has , made us proclaim since the 
First Manifesto the subject in art as a necessity, 
and it is this construction which gives our Fu- 
turist painting a profoundly Italian character. 

If therefore we have in Picasso a force striv- 
ing to escape from everything conventional in 
art (and aided in this by thirty years and more 
of French painting), the Cubists on the con- 
trary plunge back into it. If in the former we 
find abstraction carried to the point of aridity, 
a quality native to the Spanish breed to which 
he belongs (the Spaniards have always been, in 
the past, the most stylized analysts), what we 
Futurists — true, serene, and well-balanced 
Italians — fmd in the Cubists is frigid, French, 
academic good taste. 

And in fact the Cubists and their criticai cham- 
pions are forever appealing to this French 
tradition. 

Can one speak of a French tradition? Can one 
speak of it in connection with the Cubists who 
aspire to create something universally typical 
and seek it by going back and reattaching them- 
selves to the French tradition? France, pictori- 
ally speaking, has never shown any realization 
of an agreed-on conventional ideal. It has al- 
ways fluctuated between Flemish art, of which 
it is a Latinizing branch, and the authentically 
Latin art of Italy. 

When we say Greek sculpture or Italian paint- 
ing or Flemish painting our mind immediately 



244 




understands these in terms of homogeneous cy- 
cles, historical continuities in a people's artistic 
expression. But what do we think of when we 
say German painting? Of embalmed monsters 
realized by sour-tempered creators. What do 
we think of when we say Spanish painting? Of 
some painter or of some portrait. . . . What do 
we think of when we say French painting? Of 
partial studies of reali ty that follow one another 
from Fouquet to the Impressionists and repre- 
sent the traditional traits of the French people, 
and that struggle desperately against attempts at 
style entirely inspired by the general culture, which 
unfortunately always win out in France. I there- 
fore cali tradition in art the logicai, inevitable, 
cóntinuous development of a people's capacity 
to form and hold to ideals beyond any returns 
to, or sympathies with, or influences from, for- 
eign schools or fashions. 

What can be said to be truly great in French 
painting and sculpture has always been a Gothic 
tempered with sobriety and lightened by ele- 
gance. Even the Impressionists with their ex- 
ample of collective genius (in collaboration) have 
borne out the Gothic tradition in one of its chief 
traits: Impressionism is, pictorially speaking, the 
cathedral of modernity. 

From this Gothic basis can there arise, re- 
maining French, a universal style? We Italian Fu- 
turists say no. A style universal not only for 
Europe but for ali men of the Western world 
cannot flower again except in Italy. At the dose 
of the fourteenth century and in the first years 
of the fifteenth Gothic art was at its zenith, but 
its realistic poetry had to emigrate to Italy to 
find an outlet in the ocean of Michelangelo. 
We may well consider whether we are not ob- 
serving again today in Cubism the same con- 
gealing, the same weary, dried-up, complicated 
mannerism that characterized the fading of 
Gothic art in the fifteenth century. 

French painting, we see, has been either ve- 
ristic and naturalistic or coldly academic and 
Italianizing: As a whole it has always had a char- 
acteristic tendency to become pretty to the point 
of sweetness. 

And when in the nineteenth century it freed 
itself from the cold and sterile Greco-Raphael- 
esque influences and tried through the logicai 
richness of realism to rise to the solemn, the 
grandiose, the terrible (Romanticism), it almost 
always betrayed what every good Frenchman 
calls within himself la tradition francaise. 

Mudi as he is to be admired, Poussin is no 
genius. He is presumed by some to have started 
what the French cali national art, oigoùt francais. 
But even on this point the Cubists disagree 



among themselves. Here however it would be 
better to understand each other: If French art 
means academic good taste, conventional ele- 
gance, harmony according to rules, Poussin did 
found the tradition and Lorrain would continue 
it and David, preceded by his teacher Vien and 
followed by Ingres, the most rigid of the Greco- 
bourgeois. But everyone aware of the problem 
of painting understands that their works are 
not stages in the artistic ideals of the French peo- 
ple but beautiful constructions to meet worldly 
demands. They are not solutions in continuity 
but academic reactions, palace revolutions in 
the great palace of Culture, while they hardly 
speak at ali of what is outside, in nature. Look 
at architecture: the same story. France arranges, 
with that elegance inherited from the Gothic 
and Romanesque, but it never makes an origi- 
nai and profound synthesis of the two forces, 
Versailles and its pavilions, Le Nòtre and his 
gardens: Don't they seem like the miracles of a 
dressmaker of genius, of a great embroiderer! 
It is always an art of adornment. It is always 
the worldly spirit that wins, the cultivated spirit. 
It is the effort to renovate the decorative splen- 
dors of the past. Rarely does their eye observe 
nature and extract a rhythm from it and a vig- 
orous formula. Whenever the great French art- 
ists have produced a sincere work in painting 
or sculpture, it is gentle, timid, almost plasti- 
cally labored, though often elegant. This is 
characteristic of the truly French painters, which 
means realistic and anti-Italian, until the nine- 
teenth century, when with the Barbizon paint- 
ers and the Impressionists we enter a period 
that marks the apogee of French painting. 

Let us not forget however that before that 
period French painters were great according 
to what, for me, is not the French tradition, but 
for the more they had distilled from Greece, 
Rome, Pc»mpeii, and Raphael. Michelangelo was 
little understood or translated into French. He 
was already too grim, too passionately abstract, 
and his influence would be found in Daumier, 
Delacroix, and Millet, temperaments that are 
not very French if those of Poussin and David 
represent the French tradition. Looking back, 
even for anyone with a moderate knowledge 
of French painting and art, Cousin can seem 
only a mediocre artist hardly of even documen- 
tary importance; Vouet an entirely mediocre Ba- 
roque, the triumphant heir of ali the Italian 
decadence of the Carracci, etc; Le Sueur, Le 
Brun, Mignard, Rigaud, and Largillière are hol- 
low, cold, affected academics. Claude Lorrain 
glimpsed the future in light, but Italianizing clas- 
sicism diminishes him, makes him antipathetic. 



Umberto Boccioni, ca. 1912, from the 
archive of the journal Der Sturm. Photo: 
Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 
Handschriftenabteilung, Berlin (West) 

Poussin and then David and then Ingres each in 
his time aspired to the ideal, to the definitive, 
but without success, preoccupied solely with 
Greece and Rome. They understood the ab- 
stract, the grandiose, the definitive — in short, 
style — only from the point of view of the an- 
cients, Greek and Roman foreigners. 

The French character and methods of inves- 
tigation did not exist for their temperament 
steeped in classical culture; at the most they paid 
homage to the naturalistic and imitative basis 
of the French with an odd succession of por- 
traits that remained colored translations into 
French of Greco-Roman marbles and plaster 
casts. These were unfruitful works, strictly per- 
sonal, with no subsequent development by other 
artists since they were studied more from art 
than from nature in their inspiration as in their 
style. 

Froment, Fouquet, Clouet, Philippe de 
Champaigne, Callot, the Le Nain brothers, Wat- 
teau, Fragonard, and Chardin should be taken 
as marking the straight line of French realism; 
they are indeed the authentic French tradition, 
but they followed one another at too great dis- 
tances and were disregarded by their own peo- 



245 



pie, unaware of themselves, half-Flemish, 
unequal in achievement, too limited and de- 
pendent on chance. They follow one another 
according to their temperament more than for 
logicai continuity of development, ali being 
timid and isolated. 

Here something I had not thought of before 
comes to mind. In Paris when I gave my talk 
in French on "Futurist Painting and Sculpture" 
in the large hall on rue de La Boétie where my 
first exhibition of sculpture opened, I remem- 
ber that in the middle of the uproar and the 
noisy crossfire of invectives, while I was 
analyzing French painting and bringing out what 
seemed to me the Cubists' gifts, a gentleman 
shouted or, rather, howled: "Monsieur! les cubistes 
ne sont pas frangaisl" ["Sir, the Cubists aren't 
Frenchmen!"] . The riot that followed, and the 
fìstfight that broke out between that gentleman 
and numerous Cubists kept me from reflecting 
on what seemed a mere interruption, an ironie 
aside. Thinking back on it, I now ask myself if 
the gentleman was not perhaps right. ... I don't 
say that our Cubist friends are not French: But 
I wonder if the character of their tendency does 
not revive yet again a historical phenomenon 
frequent in France. Every time — to limit my- 
self to painting — French naturalism initiates a 
period, a development, that shows signs of lead- 
ing to a definitive break in the continuity, that 
is, of finding a way out by means of a definitive 
universal formula, elements of foreign sensi- 
bility are immediately superimposed that, not 
being assimìlable by the populace, confuse, de- 
viate, or block the pure naturai course of the 
French spring, the Celtic. Serene, gentle, 
and orderly naturalism gives way to a cold in- 
tellectual complication. 

Between the equally irresolute Gothic-veristic 
and Latin-idealistic tendencies, France arrived 
at the beautiful, grand, and logicai flowering 
that filled the entire nineteenth century. In that 
century we see a Romanticism (which is a real- 
ism on an idealistic base) triumphing with Gros, 
Géricault, and Delacroix over the Raphaelesque 
Greekeries of David and Ingres. We see another 
Romanticism manifesting itself in Corot, a re- 
alist veiled in classical nostalgia, and another in 
Millet, an idyllic realist, unpolished and hum- 
ble. Then follow ali the more or less veristic 
efforts of the Fontainebleau landscapists; with 
this period, which had not yet successfully ex- 
tricated itself from classical Italian, Flemish, 
Dutch, and English influences, we come ever 
closer to the great Impressionist revolution. 
France owes to Gustave Courbet and Edouard 
Manet the blows struck for a radicai transfor- 
mation that would leave no doubts of the exis- 



tence of old-master influences — at least as an 
object of reaction. But even these artists, who 
seemed so terrible to their contemporaries, were 
not immune from influence of the museum, 
whether classical or Spanish. . . .When one thinks 
of the terror of artists before the audacious and 
the arbitrary! . . . 

Impressionism, the ultimate evolution of a 
naturalism centuries old, was also the first page 
of the poem that must sing of the forces of 
matter beyond the accidental and the episodic. 

The Impressionist motif (as a basis for com- 
position) is nothing less than the first step 
toward the creation of a plastic organism con- 
structed out of the pure lyrical interplay (of 
masses, lines, and lights) between object and 
setting. It has become, let us not forget, the 
single word with which we express today — 
regardless of what is said about it — the Eu- 
ropean artistic sensibility. Impressionism is 
therefore a plastic lyricism that indicates the way 
toward the final reproducing of the image 
merely to give back that image. It points to- 
ward creating the plastic fact, toward creating 
what only we Italian Futurists have proclaimed 
and produced: the style of sensation, the impres- 
sion eternalized, and dynamism. With Impression- 
ism it seemed that French painting might find 
at last that break with continuity, that opening 
into a definitive universal formula I spoke 
about above. The contrary occurred. With 
Cézanne's investigations of volume and statics, 
of weight, tone, and the rest — correct in prin- 
ciple and erroneous in their consequences — and 
with Cubism and its a priori concepts which 
are the systematic and logicai outgrowth of 
Cézanne's pictures — note this well! — not of his 
ideas, the French academic tradition once again 
carne to the foreground. 

As I said at the start, what I consider Cub- 
ism to be is an attempt to give style to ali the 
truths of form and color renovated from the 
Impressionists forward. But a style is not some- 
thing brought about by wishing or by culture, 
that is, by knowing what was style in other 
times. Style is born and develops spontaneously 
out of the profound will of a people and on 
the bases of their fundamental and characteris- 
tic sensibility. 

One cannot find, as the Cubists' theory will 
have it, anything fixed, a priori, and definitive 
that corresponds to the spirit of our moder- 
nity. The elements we make use of are stili 
few and uncertain. It is harmful and false to 
turn to the old artists or to base oneself on them 
so as to give one's own work the serene and 
universal character of the definitive realization. 
We will find the definitive by proceeding to the 



interpretation of the relations of motion of the 
objects. Thus, instead of fixing limits to objects, 
as artists did before Impressionism, the objects 
must be interpreted in their reciprocai formai 
influences, in the gravitation of the masses, in 
the direction of the forces. The Cubists con- 
struct a definitive by interpreting Cézanne's 
teachings in a negative sense. 

[Footnote by Boccioni: On the subject of 
influence from elements of foreign sensibility, 
it should be noted that Cézanne's teaching is 
entirely old Italian and that the two Cubists 
Gleizes and Metzinger in their book Du Cubisme 
conclude one chapter by saying that the Cu- 
bists' means demonstrate, if studied attentively, 
that they have leurs lettres de noblesse in Michel- 
angelo. One day in Paris Monsieur Vollard told 
me he intended some time or other to demon- 
strate that Cézanne is of Italian origin and 
that the name Cézanne is a degenerate form 
of Cesena. . . . This means nothing to me.] 

Interpreted thus, Cézanne becomes the source 
of a definitive position which is a dead stop, if 
not a step backward. There was in Cézanne the 
danger found in ali intellectual artists: a gap open 
to tradition. In Cézanne we have continuai clas- 
sical overtures of the museum. Seduced by this, 
the Cubists have exaggerated Cézanne's famous 
advice to return to the cube, the sphere, the 
cylinder. They have taken literally Cézanne's 
idea: "Il faut faire le musée devant la nature," 
and thus have forgotten nature and turned out 
museum pieces. They have exaggerated Cé- 
zanne's coloring and, despising Impressionist 
chromaticism, have emphasized pure chiar- 
oscuro, seasoning it with French grays and cold 
tones worthy of Giraudet [sic], Prud'hon, and 
Ingres. And exaggerating their terror of the ep- 
isodic [as subject matter] they have generalized 
forms and fallen into an external generalization 
from outside themselves, lacking ali vitality. Fol- 
lowing the French academic tradition, they have 
wished to rise to the concept within the form, 
forgetting that this concept must arise as a 
purification of naturalistic objectivity and not 
be a process of imitating or of an affinity with 
the old masters. 

For this reason the quest for a definitive so- 
lution that would dose the parabola of mod- 
em art does not interest us Italians. Let the 
Cubists who declare themselves heirs of Poussin 
dose off the parabola of a national tradition, 
or those who declare themselves heirs of Clouet 
and of ali French naturalism. We Italian Futur- 
ists have no tradition to be closed off or con- 
tinued. The paganism expressed in the human 
type is a thing of the past, dead with Michel- 
angelo. It no longer interests us, and we feel 



246 




Boccioni's mother in front of Horse + Houses (Cavallo 

+ case; Fondazione Peggy Guggenheim, Venice), ca. 1914. 

Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan. Courtesy Angelo Calmarmi 



ourselves completely cut off from it. The 
definitive forni in the classical sense, whether 
Greek or old-master Italian, is completely un- 
known to the Futurists. We modem Italians are 
without a past. Perhaps the French can believe 
they are carrying on from one of their great 
primitives. It is understandable. The naturai line 
of the French Primitives breaks with the Italian- 
ism of Louis XIV. The return to nature — how- 
ever precious and powdered — on the part of 
Watteau and Fragonard, as well as Chardin's 
more humble and sincere and more profound 
pictorialism, was halted and detoured, faced 
with Winckelmann and Raffaele Mengs. Cé- 
zanne but above ali the Cubists again interrupt 
with a new intellectualism, cerebral and tradi- 
tional, the work of Monet, Pissarro, and 
Renoir. . . Perhaps inevitably. . . 

In Italy on the other hand, from the Primi- 
tives and Cimabue to Michelangelo, the Vene- 
tians, Caravaggio, Bernini, and Tiepolo we can 
follow a development that is dose, ineluctable, 
and undisturbed within which the artists always 
succeed one another from one exploration to 
the next, each artist complete, masterful, and 
definitive. Canova has no place in the history 
of Italian sensibility. The triumphal entry that 
our newest Italian painting has made into Eu- 
ropean sensibility with the Futurist painters gives 
the greatest hopes for the future. 

From the death of Michelangelo until today, 
artistic Europe has sought out and accumulated 
the elements for a type of newness that only 
we Italians can express. We Futurists are the 
sole primitives of a new sensibility, completely 
transformed. 

Thus the Cubists are not offering a completely 
new interpretation of this matter, that is, beyond 
conceiving it in the sum total of its dimensions 
and in the determinism of the organic qualities 
of its forces. They stop short with the question 
of how to construct a picture, how to compose 
it, how to distribute the masses and colors in it. 
They turn upside down the elements of the tra- 
ditional picture and fmd new rhythms for the 
new combination of a line and a curve. But 
that is not ali. What we are getting from them 
is stili only a new way of arranging the surface, 
not a new and abstract interpretation of picto- 
rial depth. Some Cubists seem concerned only 
with the search for a new law of frontality that 
can serve — as Longhi said in a magnificent ar- 
ti eie on Futurist painting — to "increase the sur- 
face of an object that can be plastically realized" 
{La Voce, no. 15, Aprii 10, 1913). 

But this is not enough to construct a living 
figure, much less a picture. And because ali the 
Cubists make use more or less of Picasso's ele- 



ments, plainly they are committing the mis- 
take of believing that with pieces of anatomy a 
living person can be put together. A figure or a 
picture cannot be made to live in any other way 
than by living them, and Picasso, when he dis- 
seets a figure, slices it into bits and pieces, breaks 
it down into its elements, kills it. And when 
the Cubists construct with these elements, they 
make a dead creature, embalmed. 

Moreover the Cubist picture is impregnated 
with the atmosphere of a museum, which 
comes to them — I will never tire of saying so 
— from Cézanne and from a mistaken feeling 
for a hasty conciliation between revolution and 
tradition. The study and consequent influences 
of the archaic antique, Negro art, wooden sculp- 
ture, the Byzantines, and so on, have saturated 
the pictures of our young friends in France with 
an archaism that is one more outdated disaster, 
another cultural phenomenon like the Greco- 
Roman influences. If those influences from ru- 
dimentary arts have become accepted for their 
novelty, if they have served to liberate us from 
the classical, they are also harmful to the devel- 
opment of a pure, modem, plastic conscious- 
ness. It is in this sense that we declare ourselves 
Primitives. Not one of us Futurists, whether 
painter or sculptor, is affected by that archaism 



which always entails the hieratic immobility of 
solemn antique stamp that repels us. I repeat 
again: There is a barbarism in modem life that 
inspires us. Thus we have no wish to repro- 
duce the movement of the crowds and the epi- 
sodes that take place under our nose. We desire 
to seek out within the unconscious necessities 
of life, in the way they manifest themselves, 
the laws for a new — completely netvì — artistic 
consciousness. To us Futurists it is not interest- 
ing to know whether the Cubists are changing, 
whether today one is working in Dynamism 
and another in Orphism, whether one of them 
is talking about modem life, about complemen- 
tarity or about simultaneity, and with an infan- 
tile and desperate overinsistence .... We know 
the Cubism we were compared with in France, 
in articles and books, when our Technical Mani- 
festo of Futurist Painting carne out (Aprii 11, 1910) 
and our first exhibition at the Galene Bernheim- 
Jeune was held (February 6, 1912). In the man- 
ifesto and in the exhibition catalogue we were 
the first to speak of dynamism, of modem life, of 
complementarity in form and color. At that time 
there was laughter and ferocious criticism. Many 
of those things are now being taken up in Paris, 
in Germany, in Russia, in Japan. Newspapers, 
letters, reviews, and books are proof of it. In- 



247 



numerable young people from abroad scnd us 
photographs of their pictures. This satisfies our 
pride as Italians and shows that we were right. 

When we spoke about subject in a picture, 
foreseeing and realizing the trend now accepted 
everywhere, our idea was interpreted as a de- 
sire to return to the anecdotal. . . . How could 
we have thought that, we who — perhaps bet- 
ter and earlier than everyone — could see that 
the Impressionist motif was the beginning of 
the destruction of the scene with images? We 
wanted to proclaim and make it understood, 
amid the ferociously objective tendencies that 
dominated in France a few years ago, that there 
is no possibility of rising to a definitive in forms 
and colors except through emotion. It is emo- 
tion that sets the measure, curbs analysis, legit- 
imizes the arbitrary, and creates dynamism. 
Emotion and subject are synonymous. 

It was the motion of the object that interested 
us! In its lyrical interpretation (emotion) con- 
sista the just means, the fulcrum on which to 
center the representation of reality without its 
life being choked, or falling into didactics or 
the chaos of higher analysis. 

To sum up, we Futurists hereby deny that 
Cubism created an abstract system of ciphers, 
a kind of artistic conceptualism which, by set- 
ting up predetermined types, can substitute in 
practice for the artist's intuition.To pass on to 
the concept in art, as the Cubists wish to do when 
the identity of outward and inward reality is 
lacking in us, is very dangerous, as proved by 
the frigid fabrication of images practiced by 
certain Cubists. 

What should not be forgotten is this: The 
point of view is completely altered with Futurist 
dynamism. However inward-turning modem 
painting has been until now, it has always un- 



rolled a spectacle of successive images before 
us. Although the Cubists may conceive the ob- 
ject in its integrai value, and the picture may be 
constituted of the harmonious combination of 
one or more object complexes within an environ- 
ment complex, the spectacle does not change. 

For our part, what we wish to give is the 
object seen in its dynamic becoming, that is, to 
give a synthesis of the transformations the ob- 
ject undergoes in its two motions, relative and 
absolute. 

We wish to give the style of the movement. 
We do not wish to observe, dissect, and trans- 
fer into images: We identify ourselves with the 
thing itself — which is somethìng profoundly 
different. For us therefore the object has no a 
priori form, and only the line is definable, mark- 
ing the relationship between its weight (quan- 
tity) and its expansion (quality). 

This suggests to us the lines of force that char- 
acterize the object's potentiality and lead us to 
a new unity which is the essential interpretation 
of the object, that is, the intuitive perception of 
life. Ours is a quest after the definitive within 
the succession of states of intuition. 

We, who are accused of seeing things out- 
wardly, of cinematography, are the only ones 
working our way toward a definitive which is 
an intuitive evolving creation. 

And thus we can say we are at the antipodes 
of Cubism. The Cubists arrive at a generaliza- 
tion by reducing the object to a geometrical 
idea — cube, cone, sphere, cylinder (Cézanne) 
—and this has its basis in reason. We arrive at 
our generalization by rendering the style of the 
impression, that is, by creating a unique dynamic 
form that will be the synthesis of the universal 
dynamism, perceived through the object's mo- 
tion. This conception which creates form as the 



continuity in space has its basis in sensation. 

Cubism has destroyed the Impressionist 
fluidity, but has turned back to a permanently 
static conception of reality. 

We say that contour and line do not exist if 
they are thought of as fixed by the delimitation 
of the planes they include. This is a true return 
to the old principles. Lines and contours exist 
as forces spurting from the dynamic action of 
physical bodies. They are therefore vectors of 
plastic forces (force-lines) that fluctuate between 
the concrete structure of the real (intelligence) 
and its variable, infinite, and mobile action 
(intuition). 

The Cubist theory constrains the object into 
an ideography a priori; we participate in the 
formula of its evolution. Cubism repeats the 
stylistic process of the Assyrians, Egyptians, 
Greeks, Leonardo da Vinci; we courageously 
enter into the conception of a truly new evolu- 
tive style. We approach the definitive by giving 
style to the secular naturalism the North devel- 
oped; they fall headlong into ali the concep- 
tions of style that, through the millennia have 
created the academy. They interrupt and turn 
their backs on the evolution of the modem pic- 
torial sensibility that the great art of Impres- 
sionism has given us; we carry it further. We 
open a new way; they dose off another. 

Therefore we do not extract haphazard plas- 
tic ideas from a thing, as Picasso does. We have 
no fixed concepts over and beyond the thing 
itself, as the Cubists do. We Futurists place 
ourselves within the thing and experience the 
evolutive concept in it. 

To refuse an a priori reality according to the 
old traditional laws of statics: This is the abyss 
that divides us from Cubism and puts us Fu- 
turists at the furthermost point in world art. 



FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE: A MANIFESTO (ca. 1913-14) 

Umberto Boccioni 



We have kicked out the commercial and tradi- 
tional apathy of the Italian painters and sculp- 
tors, and now it is time to turn our lash on 
the speculations and cowardice of our architects. 

Architecture — the liberal art par excellence, 
the vastest in aspiration toward the absolute — is, 
alas, both the most slavish and the most tied to 
life's contingencies, 

We Futurists have summed up in the last four 
years the pictorial and sculptural researches of 



a modernism completely unknown in Italy until 
now. We have created as in a spirai simultaneity, 
with form unitary and dynamic, which creates 
architectural construction in continuity: 

PLASTIC DYNAMISM = ARCHITECTONIC DYNAMIC 
AWARENESS 

The conditions of Italian architecture until now 
are particularly unfavorable. The politicai and 
social conditions, the traditional concept of 



education and hygiene, are historical barriers 
difficult for the architect to overcome by his 
personal resolve and the isolated thrust of his 
own genius. This is why we Futurists are eager 
to bring the Italian architects into the atmo- 
sphere of courage, of rigorous aesthetic soli- 
darity, that we have created. 

In architectural creation the past weighs heav- 
ily on the minds of patron and architect. Every 
sausage-maker dreams of the Renaissance or 



248 




something like it, not to speak of the monu- 
mentai asininity of the State. Contact with busi- 
nessmen saps the architect's audacity. Plagiarism, 
that bane of Italian art, brings with it two 
shameful servitudes that paralyze the develop- 
ment of an Italian architectural art: 

1. Servitude to the ancient orders and styles: 
Doric, Ionie, Corinthian, Romanesque, 
Gothic, Renaissance, Moorish, and so on. 

2. Servitude to foreign styles: sentimentality 
+ Quakerism = Cottage or English art; 
barmaid sensuality + pseudo-gypsy = 
Beer Hall or Viennese art; effete barbarism 
+ literary muzhikism = Isbà or Russian 
art; cow's milk + chocolate + Alpine 
ennui — Swiss Chalet or Rustie art. 

In the servitude to ancient styles we have stale 
and vulgar archaeological habits that give rise 
to the building-trades fetishism for the Greek, 
the Roman, the basilica, the Gothic cathedral, 
the Cinquecento palace. 

In the servitude to foreign styles — if they can 
be called that — we have instead that intellec- 
tual snobbism for the North, which has clut- 
tered up the Italian house with decorations of 
woods, cloths, objects, ali worked with the stu- 
pid taste of the peasant from sundry Hungarian, 
Russian, or Scandinavian steppes, that seeks to 
ornament our public places, theaters, cafés, 
banks, and exhibition halls with the funereal 
black marbles and glacial sculptures in black 
wood of a Berlin restaurant or with the heavy 
vivacity of Muscovite orientalism. 

It is rime to stop this. The only country which 
in its climate and its spirit can produce a mod- 
em architecture of universal style is Italy. That 
is its future function in the arts. In fifty years 
Italy will have produced great artists in paint- 
ing, sculpture, literature, music, and architec- 
ture who will have brought in laws for the 
world. 

The only way to a radicai renewal in archi- 
tecture is the return to Necessity. 

When I wrote that the formula of plastic dy- 
namism included the idealism of our epoch, I 
meant that it included in itself the necessity of 
our epoch. In modem life 

NECESSITY = VELOCITY 

Our works of painting and sculpture are calcu- 
lated to make emotion spring from an inner 
(archi tectonic) construction and flee from vi- 
sual accidents. Since volumes of forms, atmo- 
spheric volumes, voids and solids, and their 
definition demand mathematics, clarity, pre- 
cision of contours, and decisive tones, the bare- 



ness, rawness, and black-and-whiteness of our 
works live by virtue of architectonic laws dic- 
tated by harmonic laws. 

The dynamic necessity of modem life will 
necessarily create an evolving architecture. This 
concept has already been applied to ali the build- 
ings that respond directly to the necessities of 
life, which because of their function are thought 
to lie outside the aesthetic domain but instead 
are exactly those buildings that create, through 
their origins in necessity, a truly vital aesthetic 
emotion. 

A surgical instrument, a ship, a machine, a 
railroad station ali answer in their construction 
to a living necessity that creates an ensemble of 
voids and solids, of lines and planes, of bal- 
ances and equations through which arises a new, 
architectonic emotion. 

No naval engineer or machine inventor would 
ever consider sacrificing even a minimal share 
of the efficiency of their construction to accom- 
modate a decoration or any such aesthetic or 
cultural concern. Indeed we see the opposite in 
the magnificent development of mechanics. 
Ships, automobiles, railroad stations have taken 
on more aesthetic expressiveness as they have sub- 
ordinated their architectonic construction to 
what was necessary for their intended functions. 
The huge roofs of railroad stations, distantly 
related to the grandiosity of a cathedral nave, 
are being replaced by shed roofs, sufficient for 
the needs of arriving and departing trains. The 
masts and tali smokestacks that linked the look 
of a ship with that of a flowering plant, that is, 
to nature's irregularity, have vanished to make 
place for necessary ensemble: sharp-cut, fiat, 
ellipsoidal, and penetrating, designed to avoid 
friction. Automobiles have reduced the dimen- 
sions that linked them with carriages and stage 
coaches, so as to make the motor ride lower to 
the ground and sail forward like flying ma- 
chines. In time we will see airplanes that no 
longer imitate birds and fish and increasingly 
take on forms dictated by the necessities of sta- 
bility and speed. 

These profoundly instructive procedures that 
the mechanical realm offers us are totally ig- 
nored in the builder' s art, in dwellings, streets, 
and so forth. While forms of life and art are 
moving away from the chaotic disorder of na- 
ture toward the cerebral, the aesthetic preoccu- 
pation, the culture itself, impedes ali innovation. 
People have a sacred concept in the column, the 
capital, and the cornice; a sacred concept of ma- 
teriate, marble, bronze, or wood; a sacred con- 
cept of decoration. A sacred concept of the 
monumentai; a sacred concept of the eternai 
laws of statics. 



Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Conti- 
nuity in Space (Forme uniche della continuità 
nello spazio), 1913. Photo: Luca Carrà, 
Milan. Courtesy Angelo Calmarini 

The architect must toss out ali of this and 
forget he is an architect, returning to a new 
basis that is not Egyptian archaism or peasant 
primitivism, but builds for the conditions of 
life, created by science, that are imposed on us 
as pure necessity. It is this that guides the instinct 
infallibly toward aesthetic expression. The large 
apartment buildings for the people, in their nu- 
dity and their simple decoration in solid white 
and empty black, are much closer to reality than 
the country villa or city house. 

In my book on Futurist painting and sculp- 
ture I spoke of the new naturai elements that 
science and mechanics have given us; these 
elements, which we live among, are the essence 
of modem life. In those naturai elements must 
be sought the new laws for architectural 
constructions. 

One cannot speak of statics and eternity when 
every day the fever rises for remodeling, for 
speed of Communications, for quicker construc- 
tion. Ali of this shows us that in architecture 
we have turned toward an art more rigid, light, 
and mobile. 



249 



There will never be progress so long as we 
persist in the traditional servititele to building 
materials that seem to our modem sense of 
speed so heavy, cumbersome, slow to work 
with, and therefore expensive. We must dig- 
nify building materials quick to work with (iron, 
wood, brick, reinforced concrete), keeping their 
special characteristics in evidence. These mate- 
rials, used in a construction with the pure and 
simple concept of economy + utility + ra- 
pidity, create elegant contrasts of tone and 
color. A girder weatherproofed with red lead 
can be painted with ali its rivets in the spec- 
trum of colors. The rivets create decorative 
spaces. The combination of red brick with white 
cement creates a decorative shading. It is there- 
fore a stupid error to conceal the construction 
of such materials, masking and cheating them 
with whitewash, stuccos, fake marbles, and 
other such expensive and useless vulgarisms. 

In painting and sculpture we suppressed ali 
decorative superfluity, ali aesthetic preoccupation 
with monumentality and traditional solemnity. 

The cube, the pyramid, and the rectangle 
must be ruled out as basic building shapes: They 



lock the architectural line into immobility. Ali 
types of lines should be put to use at any point 
and with any means. This autonomy of the 
component parts of the edifìce will break up 
the uniformity and create an architectonic im- 
pressionism, and from this can come the rise of 
new possibilities. Meanwhile we will have de- 
stroyed the old and useless symmetry for which 
utility is always being sacrifìced. The rooms in 
a building should give, like a motor, the maxi- 
mum efficiency. Indeed, merely for symmetry 
light and space are allotted to rooms that do not 
need them, while it is sacrificed in others where 
it is most necessary to modem living. 

Likewise the facade of a house also should 
descend, rise, be broken up, recede, or project 
according to the degree of necessity of the rooms 
that compose it. It is the exterior that the archi- 
tect should sacrifice to the interior, just as in 
painting and sculpture. And because an exte- 
rior is always a traditional exterior, the new ex- 
terior that will result from the triumph of the 
interior will create a new line of architecture. 

We have said that in painting our aim is to 
place the viewer in the center of the picture, 



thereby putting him at the center of the emo- 
tion rather than leaving him a mere onlooker. 
In similar fashion the architectural environment 
of cities is changing in an enveloping sense. 
We are living in a spirai of architectonic forces. 

Until yesterday construction proceeded in a 
panoramic, successive manner. One house was 
followed by another house, one Street by 
another. 

Today we are beginning to have around us 
an architectural environment that develops in 
ali directions: from the well-lighted basement 
floors of the big department stores, from the 
various levels of tunnels in the city subway sys- 
tems, to the gigantic leap upward of the Amer- 
ican skyserapers. 

The future will bring Constant increasing 
progress to the architectural possibilities both 
in height and depth. Life itself will shape the 
age-old horizontal line of the earth's surface, 
with the infinite perpendicular in height and 
depth of the elevator, and with the spirals of 
the airplane and dirigible. 

The future is preparing for us a sky invaded 
by architectonic scaffoldings. 



THE ITALIAN FUTURIST PAIN 
INITIATORS OF THE FUTURIST ART 

We may declare, without boasting, that the first 
exhibition of Italian futurist painting, recently 
held in Paris and London and now brought to 
San Francisco, is the most important exhibition 
of Italian painting which has hitherto been of- 
fered to the judgment of America. 

For we are young and our art is violently 
revolutionary. What we have attempted and ac- 
complished, while attracting around us a large 
number of skillful imitators and as many pla- 
giarists without talent, has placed us at the head 
of the European movement in painting, by a 
road different from, yet, in a way, parallel with 
that followed by the post-impressionists, syn- 
thetists and cubists of France, led by their mas- 
ters Picasso, Braque, Derain, Metzinger, Le 
Fauconnier, Gleizes, Leger, Lhote, etc. 

While we admire the heroism of these paint- 
ers of great worth, who have displayed a laud- 
able contempt for artistic commercialism and a 
powerful hatred of academism, we feel ourselves 
and we declare ourselves to be absolutely op- 
posed to their art. 

They obstinately continue to paint objects 
motionless, frozen, and ali the static aspeets of 



AND SCULPTORS 



Nature; they worship the traditionalism of 
Poussin, *of Ingres, of Corot, ageing and petri- 
fying their art with an obstinate attachment to 
the past, which to our eyes remains totally 
incomprehensible. 

We, on the contrary, with points of view per- 
taining essentially to the future, seek for a style 
of motion, a thing which has never been at- 
tempted before us. 

Far from resting upon the examples of the 
Greeks and the old masters, we constantly extol 
individuai intuition; our object is to determine 
completely new laws which may deliver paint- 
ing from the wavering uncertainty in which it 
lingers. 

Our desire, to give as far as possible to our 
pictures a solid construction, can never bear us 
back to any tradition whatsoever. Of that we 
are firmly convinced. 

Ali the truths learned in the schools or in the 
studios are abolished for us. Our hands are free 
enough and pure enough to start everything 
afresh. 

It is indisputable that several of the esthetic 
declarations of our French comrades display a 



sort of masked academism. 

It is not, indeed, a return to the Academy to 
declare that the subject, in painting, is of per- 
fectly insignificant value? 

We declare, on the contrary, that there can 
be no modem painting without the starting 
point of an absolutely modem sensation, and 
none can contradict us when we state that 
painting and sensation are two inseparable words. 

If our pictures are futurist, it is because they 
are the result of absolutely futurist conceptions, 
ethical, esthetic, politicai and social. 

To paint from the posing model is an ab- 
surdity, and an act of mental cowardice, even if 
the model be translated upon the picture in lin- 
ear, spherical or cubie forms. 

To lend an allegorical significance to an ordi- 
nary nude figure, deriving the meaning of the 
picture from the objects held by the model or 
from those which are arranged about him, is to 
our mind the evidence of a traditional and aca- 
demic mentality. 

This method, very similar to that employed 
by the Greeks, by Raphael, by Titian, by Vero- 
nese, must necessarily dìsplease us. 



250 



While we repudiate impressionism, we em- 
phatically condemn the present reaction which 
in order to kill impressionism, brings back paint- 
ing to old academic forms. 

Is it only possible to react against impres- 
sionism by surpassing it. 

Nothing is more absurd than to fight it by 
adopting the pictorial laws which preceded it. 

The points of contact which the quest of style 
may have with the so-called classic art do not 
concern us. 

Others will seek, and will, no doubt, dis- 
cover, these analogies which in any case cannot 
be looked upon as a return to methods, con- 
ceptions and values transmitted by classical 
painting. 

A few examples will illustrate our theory. 

We see no difference between one of those 
nude figures commonly called artistic and an 
anatomical piate. There is, on the other hand, 
an enormous difference between one of these 
nude figures and our futurist conception of the 
human body. 

Perspective, such as it is understood by the 
majority of painters, has for us the very same 
value which they lend to an engineer's design. 

The simultaneousness of states of mind in 
the work of art; that is the intoxicatìng aim of 
our art. 

Let us explain again by examples. In paint- 
ing a person on a balcony, seen from inside the 
room, we do not limit the scene to what the 
square frame of the window renders visible; but 
we try to render the sum total of visual sensa- 
tions which the person on the balcony has ex- 
perienced; the sunbathed throng in the Street, 
the doublé row of houses which strctch to right 
and left, the beflowered balconies, etc. This im- 
plies the simultaneousness of the ambient, and, 
therefore, the dislocation and dismemberment 
of objects, the scattering and fusion of details, 
freed from accepted logie, and independent from 
one another. 

In order to make the spectator live in the cen- 
tre of the picture, as we express it in our mani- 
festo, the picture must be the synthesis of what 

ONE REMEMBERS and of WHAT ONE SEES. 

You must render the invisible which stirs and 
lives beyond intervening obstacles, what we 
have on the right, on the left, and behind us, 
and not merely the small square of life artificially 
compressed, as it were, by the wings of a stage. 

We have declared in our manifesto that what 
must be rendered is the dynamic sensation, 
that is to say, the particular rhythm of each ob- 
ject, its inclination, its movement, or, to put it 
more exactly, its interior force. 



It is usuai to consider the human being in its 
different aspeets of motion or stillness, of joyous 
excitement or grave melancholy. 

What is overlooked is that ali inanimate ob- 
jects display, by their lines, calmness or frenzy, 
sadness or gaiety. These various tendencies lend 
to the lines of which they are formed a sense 
and character of weighty stability or of aerial 
lightness. 

E very object reveals by its lines how it would 
resolve itself were it to follow the tendencies of 
its forces. 

This decomposition is not governed by fixed 
laws, but it varies according to the characteris- 
tic personality of the object and the emotions 
of the onlooker. 

Furthermore, every object influences its 
neighbor, not by reflections of light (the foun- 
dation of impressionistic primitivism), but by 
a real competition of lines and by real confliets 
of planes, following the emotional law which 
governs the picture (the foundation of futurist 
primitivism). 

With the desire to intensify the aesthetic emo- 
tions by blending, so to speak, the painted can- 
vas with the soul of the spectator, we have 
declared that the latter "must in future be placed 
in the centre of the picture." 



He shall not be present at, but participate in 
the action. If we paint the phases of a riot, the 
crowd bustling with uplifted fists and the noisy 
onslaughts of cavalry are translated upon the 
canvas in sheaves of lines corresponding with 
ali the conflicting forces, following the general 
law of violence of the picture. 

These force-lines must encircle and involve 
the spectator so that he will in a manner be 
forced to struggle himself with the persons in 
the picture. 

Ali objects tend to the infinite by their force- 
lines, the continuity of which is measured by 
our intuition. 

It is these force-lines that we must draw in 
order to lead back the work of art to true paint- 
ing. We interpret nature by rendering these ob- 
jects upon the canvas as the beginnings or the 
prolongations of the rhythms impressed upon 
our sensibility by these very objects. 

After having, for instance, reproduced in a 
picture the right shoulder or the right ear of a 
figure, we deem it totally vain and useless to 
reproduce the left shoulder or the left ear. We 
do not draw sounds, but their vibrating inter- 
vals. We do not paint diseases, but their symp- 
toms and their consequences. 

We may further explain our idea by a com- 




The Futurist group in Paris during the exhibition at the Galene 
Bernheim-Jeune, 1912. From left to right: Luigi Russolo, 
Carlo Carrà, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, 
and Gino Severini. Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan 



251 



parison drawn from the evolution of music. 

Not only have we radically abandoned the 
motive fully developed according to its deter- 
mined and, therefore, artificial equilibrium, but 
we suddenly and purposely intersect each mo- 
tive with one or more other motives of which 
we never give the full development but merely 
the initial, centrai, or final notes. 

As you see, there is with us not merely vari- 
ety, but chaos and clashing of rhythms, totally 
opposed to one another, which we neverthe- 
less assemble into a new harmony. 

We thus arrive at what we cali the painting 

OF STATES OF MIND. 

In the pictorial description of the various states 
of mind of a leave-taking, perpendicular lines, 
undulating and as it were worn out, clinging 
here and there to silhouettes of empty bod- 
ies, may well express languidness and discour- 
agement. 

Confused and trepidating lines, either straight 
or curved, mingled with the outlined hurried 
gestures of people calling one another, will ex- 
press a sensation of chaotic excitement. 

On the other hand, horizontal lines, fleeting, 
rapid and jerky, brutally cutting into half lost 
profiles of faces or crumbling and rebounding 
fragments of landscape, will give the tumultu- 
ous feelings of the persons going away. 

It is practically impossible to express in words 
the essential values of painting. 

The public must also be convinced that in 
order to understand aesthetic sensations to 
which one is not accustomed, it is necessary to 



forget entirely one's intellectual culture, not in 
order to assimilate the work of art, but to de- 
liver one's self up to it heart and soul. 

We are beginning a new epoch of painting. 

We are sure henceforward of realizing con- 
ceptions of the highest importance and the most 
unquestionable originality. Others will follow 
who, with equal daring and determination,will 
conquer those summits of which we can only 
catch a glimpse. That is why we have pro- 
claimed ourselves to be the primitives of a com- 

PLETELY RENOVATED SENSITIVENESS. 

In several of the pictures which we are pre- 
senting to the public, vibration and motion end- 
lessly multiply each object. We have thus 
justifìed our famous statement regarding the 

"rUNNING HORSE WHICH HAS NOT FOUR LEGS, BUT 
TWENTY." 

One may remark, also, in our pictures spots, 
lines, zones of color which do not correspond 
to any reality, but which, in accordance with a 
law of our interior mathematics, musically pre- 
pare and enhance the emotion of the spectator. 

We thus create a sort of emotive ambience, 
seeking by intuition the sympathies and the links 
which exist between the exterior (concrete) scene 
and the interior (abstract) emotion. Those lines, 
those spots, those zones of color, apparently 
illogicai and meaningless, are the mysterious 
keys to our pictures. 

We shall no doubt be taxed with an excessive 
desire to define and express in tangible form 
the subtle ties which unite our abstract interior 
with the concrete exterior. 



Yet, could we leave an unfettered liberty of 
understanding to the public which always sees 
as it has been taught to see, through eyes warped 
by routine? 

We go our way, destroying each day in our- 
selves and in our pictures the realistic forms 
and the obvious details which have served us 
to construct a bridge of understanding between 
ourselves and the public. In order that the crowd 
may enjoy our marvellous spiritual world, of 
which it is ignorant, we give it the material 
sensation of that world. 

We thus reply to the coarse and simplistic 
curiosity which surrounds us by the brutally 
realistic aspects of our primitivism. 

Conclusioni Our futurist painting embodies 
three new conceptions of painting: 

1 . That which solves the question of volumes 
in a picture, as opposed to the liquefaction of 
objects favored by the vision of the impres- 
sionists. 

2. That which leads us to translate objects 
according to the force lines which distinguish 
them, and by which is obtained an absolutely 
new power of objective poetry, 

3. That (the naturai consequence of the other 
two) which would give the emotional ambi- 
ence of a picture, the synthesis of the various 
abstract rhythms of every object, from which 
there springs a fount of pictorial lyricism hith- 
erto unknown. 

Umberto Boccioni 
(Member of the Futurist Group in Milan) 



MARINETTI ON BOCCIONI 



[Author's note: Boccioni seems to have inspired 
frustrated fury in those opposed to his art and 
ideas, and admiration in everyone else. When 
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti — Futurist No. 1, 
the roaring boy of Italy, the "caffeine of Europe" 
— spoke of him, it was invariably with an un- 
wonted note of respect, even a tenderness ali 
but absent from his references to the other com- 
rades in the Futurist struggles. The following 
excerpts from Marinetti's writings convey viv- 
idly something of what many others must have 
thought and felt about Boccioni in his lifetime. 
The first is from the catalogue of a posthumous 
exhibition in 1924; the others are from the mem- 
oirs the perpetuai fighter wrote in 1944, shortly 
before he died at sixty-eight, exhausted and bed- 



ridden after almost two years of active duty on 
the Eastern front.] 

Let us not insult Boccioni with a funeral eu- 
logy. Commemorations of the Illustrious De- 
ceased always brought out his most biting irony. 

When the passatisti, lovers-of-the-past, com- 
memorate a traditional artist they murmur be- 
tween sobs: "We cannot believe he is dead; he 
continues to live in his immortai works; he lives 
and breathes here among us!" But they He, they 
lie! The traditional artist is already dead in his 
lifetime. His works reprinted and his paintings 
newly exhibited are nothing but corpses rebur- 
ied, new funerals added to those he had con- 
ducted in person for his already dead ideas when 



he was (as people thought) alive. 

Here we have something very different, an- 
other atmosphere entirely, at the opposite pole 
of the prevailing spiritual forces. Boccioni was 
a great antitraditional and revolutionary inno- 
vator. He remains in actual fact alive beyond 
death. Much more: From ali the walls loaded 
with his explosive colors Boccioni hurls him- 
self ferociously against the whole lot of aca- 
demic painters, against ali the critics bent on 
smothering, against the museums, against the 
ruins he blew up in six years of Futurist talks 
and fìghts. 

Today the many pedants of Italy Boccioni 
hated are cheerfully seating themselves at table 
around his corpse and imbibing their dainty sips 



252 



in the candlelight of history: The Origins of 
Boccioni's Genius; Boccioni's Intimate Life; The 
Artist's Soul; His Cultural Preparation; His 
Nostalgie Spirit Deformed by the Futurist 
Crowd! 

Well — , no. Sorry as I am to disturb your 
necrophilic repast, I say to you lovers-of-the- 
past that Boccioni had no "cultural preparation. " 
Read his book on Futurist painting and sculp- 
ture and you will feel the slaps in the face that 
shoot from its pages against any "cultural spirit." 
Boccioni leafed through many books, but he 
always preferred a pretty woman or a trip to 
any treatise on philosophy or aesthetics you can 
name. He lived his entire life reading that life 
of his, erasing it, rewriting it with passion. His 
was the great and complex spirit of an Italian 
Futurist. Better, he was living, plastic Futur- 
ism itself, understood as the universal dyna- 
mism of forces re-created in the extremely vivid 
and high-intensity colors of his Romagnolo 
blood. The world was remodeled dynamically 
by his vibrant body, utterly Italian, modem, 
trim and taut, which looked much more like 
an electric motor than like the bodies attached 
to those bespectacled artists of philosophy with 
the picturesquely powdered long hair of Old 
Italy. The plastic Futurism he loved is the New 
Italy: Elated, wide-awake, extemporaneous, and 
headstrong, it bristles with powerful angles, 
airswept spirals, belligerent colors, absolutely 
opposed to the wan, sagging, flabby, and stu- 
pidly fancy-frilly Italy of old. 

Boccioni was deformed by no one, was never 
a yearner after the good old days, a solemn 
brainracker, a weakling. For many years he was 
oppressed by the most tragic poverty and an 
artistic environment of the most traditional and 
moldy and musty. He smashed out of both with 
one utterly incisive blow of the elbow like a 
mountain in earthquake, splitting open the low, 
leaden sky of Italian art. 

An exhibition of Boccioni's work cannot be, 
never will be, a place of study or a clinic of 
philosophical anatomizing. Instead: attacks and 
counterattacks of new ideas. Every drawing is 
a challenge. Every canvas is a barbed-wire fence 
that Boccioni clings to by heroic innovative will, 
under the bombardment of the most massive, 
backward-yearning imbecilities. The machine 
guns of the pessimists, of the mediocrities, rat- 
tle away. Those who do not believe in absolute 
courage, in the fever of the ideal, murmur: 
"How in the world could a painter who had 
painted such a sensible painting as Three Women 
dare to turn out a picture like Elasticityì" I reply 
with his own word: Elasticityì 



Elasticity of the most lyrical of horses, who 
knew how to escape from a gloomy stable and 
blend into the horizon, multiplying a hundred- 
fold. I do not want to make much over Three 
Women except for the epithet "sensible" which 
the picture does not deserve, simply because it 
contains Boccioni's first attempt to go beyond 
Impressionism, to solidify it, to lay out the light 
in his own way. 

The past-lovers add: "But was he really al- 
ways sincere ... ? How could that elegant, re- 
fined young man, who revealed at every instant 
a dreamer's melancholy and a sentimentalist's 
tenderness, be the most unrestrained and self- 
assured of the punch-up gang? Was there not 
perhaps in him just too much ambition and a 
bit of self-advertising? With that agile physique 
of an invincible seducer who wherever he went 
fascinated men and women alike, how could 
he contain such an intransigent up-to-the-hilt 
patriotism capable of and drunken with every 
battle and every martyrdom for the word: 
Italy?" 

No contradiction. The same marvelous simul- 
taneity of the most perfect temperament that 
the new generation of the Trentino and Carso 
[battlegrounds in the 1915-18 war against 
Austria] has produced. Perfect fusion of art and 
action. Spirit on the qui vive. Volcanic sensibil- 
ity. Flood of an overflowing ri ver of genius. 
Always up to the hilt, to the hilt; everything, 
everything, without compromises, without cal- 
culation, for the Futurist renewal of Italy; but 
also for less: a friend, a passing cloud. . . . And 
then ali of a sudden his keen eyes would slip 
over into the most delightful humor. 

To amuse himself. To love, to destroy in order 
to create, to fight and die: but laughing. 

Boccioni's divine gaiety. An agile spirit that 
sunk its teeth into ali the ridiculous fools, like a 
young fox terrier with sharp teeth but no harm 
intended. Unceasing flight, flying like an avia- 
tor never satisfied. Implacable hatred for every 
form of cliquishness and heavy-handed Teuton- 
ism. Hatred for everything stili in Italy, alas, of 
fetid, sluggish, cumbersome Kultur. 

I can stili see Boccioni shaking off four po- 
licemen with one tremendous heave of his shoul- 
ders to come to my aid in that first anti-Austrian 
demonstration of September 1914, organized 
by us Futurists right in the heart of Milan, when 
Mussolini was stili against the war and the 
Milanese hoped to remain Greeks. I can see 
Boccioni pursued by a storm of fists and raised 
clubs and murmuring to me in the thick of it: 
"I've already managed to burn four Austrian 
flags!" I see Boccioni handeuffed like me and 




F. T. Marinetti in front of Boccioni's 
Dynamism of a Soccer Player (Dinamismo di 
un footballer, no. 75), ca. 1930. Photo: Ma- 
rinetti Archive, Beinecke Library, Yale 
University, New Haven 

marched off with me, lightheartedly, to the 
prison of San Vittore. 

Boccioni on the day after the taking of Dosso 
Casina, on the flanks of Monte Altissimo, stand- 
ing on the lookout outside our trenches, a mere 
hundred meters from the Austrian trenches; he 
had volunteered for it, forced to smother a tre- 
mendous fit of coughing in his military cape 
so he could go on fighting, and though tor- 
tured by the terribly intense cold, he never re- 
gretted giving up life back in the city any more 
than our companionable warmth in jail. 

I see and hear Boccioni discussing for six 
hours at a stretch with two hundred painters 
and sculptors who had come to a gallery in 
Brussels to condemn him and to make him back 
down. He dominated, persuaded, won out, and 
re-established once and for ali the supremacy 
of the Italian Futurist genius. 

I see and hear Boccioni improvising in French, 
a language he scarcely knew, an admirable lec- 
ture in the Galerie La Boètie, where ali of intel- 
lectual Paris had gathered for his exhibition of 
sculpture. That day, as always, he routed a good 
number of traditionalist hecklers and won en- 
thusiastic applause and embraces from the whole 
lot of French avant-garde painters. 

After that fearful strain on his brain and 
nerves, Boccioni laughed, happy as a child. 

This is not an exhibition but a new Futurist 
battle to which Boccioni, alive as ever, invites 
you with a laugh on his lips. 

F. T. Marinetti 



253 



The following excerpts are from Filippo 
Tommaso Marinetti, Great Traditional and Fu- 
turist Milan, 1943, and An Italian Sensibility Born 
in Egypt, 1943, translated by Arthur A. Coppo- 
telli in Marinetti: Selected Writings, ed. R. W. 
Flint, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 
1972. 



Enrico Cavacchioli . . . introduces me to the head 
of the wild artistic bunch, Umberto Boccioni. 

He strikes me at once as being a most attrac- 
tive genius and a generator of novelty. 

With Boccioni, we watch at Previati's the 
merry-go-round, horse-drawn and electric 
streetcars clanging their way slick automobiles 
evening already night the bustling of blue al- 
most lunar cottonwool linen handkerchiefs 
bleating lights to be caught on canvas 

Previati disapproves of the muddling critics 
who know nothing of the problems of painting 

A long discussion about the luminosity of 
objects and the powdery iridescent aura that adds 
eloquence to the expert manipulator of lights 

Obeying a mystical urge Previati loves to in- 
troduce evanescent angels and diaphanous vir- 
gins into the atmosphere thus achieving the 
typical religiosity that refines and idealizes for 
example the majestic coach of the regal Sun 

"We must accustom material to expressing 
ideas" 

Umberto Boccioni argues with me and Luigi 
Russolo inventor of theories and new formulas 
and prefers my company but perhaps in a spirit 
of emulation he loves to talk to me about his 
amorous adventures and is worried about his 
first elegant clothes replacing his usuai black 
suit buttoned up to the neck matching the points 
of black fire in his eyes and the lean sharp face 
of a rebellious and ambitious Italian in search 
of glory 

When he leaves I can always find him again 
at the Caffè Cova where he satisfies his yen for 
the life of ease among rich fashionably dressed 
men and women 

A kind of austerity of erotic pleasure and rich 
pastry marks this café on the corner opposite 
La Scala, a corner that has known very few riots 
thanks to omnipresent ghosts of the Don 
Giovannis of thirty-five years ago who took 
great care of the pleats in their trousers and their 
high collars starched in London 

The monocles used for scanning expensive 
prostitutes would even attract certain motor- 
ized adventuresses to the mere fantasy of a life 
that after ali cost them nothing and with my 
own eyes I relished one of them most originai a 



self-proclaimed adept of love intent on arous- 
ing tempered caresses and embraces for just so 
long and no longer and to hell with continuity 

Boccioni craved this continuity and would 
lament his unhappy adolescent loves and the 
poverty of his family and so was intent on a 
powerful plasticity an aggressive Don juanism 
and luxury among luxuries 

He suffered from his tiny room in a little bare 
apartment beyond Porta Genova shared with 
mother and sister forced to earn their living by 
making shirts while he went vainly from shop 
to shop trying to sell his etchings and returned 
to a lonely dialogue with his cup of coffee he'd 
air his genius at the window also thirsty as it 
drank in the whole patchwork quarter of lop- 
sided terraces old roofs and clothes on the line 
dynamized by the wind 

His brush lived the metamorphosis from 
horse-drawn to electric streetcars and the im- 
mense buildings that the city's reinvigorated fì- 
nances multipiied for the sole purpose of making 
money by appealing to the social ambitions of 
the buyers 

Careening into a ditch with my 100-horse 
motorcar I teach about machines and speed 
Boccioni who was eighteen when he educated 
himself between Paris and the rivers of Siberia 
on the backs of workhorses dedicates himself 
to studying the possibìlities of monstrously 
heavy wagons of stone steel beams cement 
stretching his nerves like reins and straps around 
his muscles pulling them up to the stars 

Like flames the great ardent red-maned horse 
of Boccioni 's Città che sale [ The City Rises] rears 
up becoming his sibling Milan or rather fused 
right into his Calabrian-Romagnan veins 

Giovanni Papini has linked himself with Fu- 
turism and pays a visit to Boccioni's new work- 
shop which opens onto the Bastions through 
large glass Windows that reveal his white mal- 
leable structures 

"You're beginning the life of a great gen- 
tleman" 

I correct Papini 

"Boccioni you're becoming a workhorse in 
a hectic hasty city and you're trying down deep 
to capture the uncapturable at any price the ec- 
static crisscross of lines of an unfinished block 
of houses rising slowly with the leaping lines 
of a racehorse or better yet with the movement 
of a loaded car with people getting in and out 
back and forth far and near reflections" 

We argue about it with Carrà who reluctantly 
leaves his corner of the meeting rooms where 
he plays contrabass and English horn mutter- 
ing extreme leftist opinions about "the need to 
commit the artistic crime" or "employees only" 



You have to fight certain contagious moral- 
izings with Futuristic means and such was the 
hundred-place dinner that Count di Rudinì of- 
fered to some elegant ladies of pleasure in the 
downstairs salon of the Fiaschetteria Toscana 

To mock the hypocrites Count Rudinì pre- 
sided over this tableful of garrulous saucy young 
females Boccioni is there too seething with wit 
the dynamic lady-killing genius ali evening in 
that enormous liberated nest or den or tribe or 
harvest of the sexes happy not at ali intimidated 

After having struggled to compel ali the forces 
of bodies in motion into synthetic forms with 
oil paints Plasticine or metal Umberto Boccioni 
sets up a show in a corner of Cova's including 
his own slim nervous figure the perfect pleat in 
his trousers his biting sweet smile that seduces 
ali the women and makes several rich passéists 
buy his paintings even if they're not very con- 
vinced about Futurist art 

Boccioni who worships friendship prefers 
Russolo to Carrà 

The painful problems of poetry and the plas- 
tic arts are so urgently in need of renewal hail 
down in the train from Brussels Berlin Vienna 
Milan to the point where I can't stand it any 
longer and begin screaming right in the middle 
of the octagon in the middle of the Galleria 

"Boccioni do you or don t you know if there's 
anything outside of painting" 

But the beautiful Milanese Sunday with its 
variegated pastry of clouds and cream puffs and 
flaky cheese buns demands we leave off theo- 
rizing in order to enjoy art-life 

Boccioni taciturn in his black austere paint- 
er's jacket buttoned up to his chin studies the 
workers with their jackets thrown over their 
shoulders and sweating dauntless waiters dash- 
ing about with trays of precariously balanced 
ice-cream cups in this premature summer heat 

Unforgettable sight the wheelchair from 
which Umberto Boccioni's semiparalyzed 
mother with her beautiful face of an honest 
countrywoman of Romagna follows her eyes 
full of love her brilliant lively son in his sol- 
dier's uniform with the blanket that looks like 
a boa skin around his neck and his rifle that's 
too long and can't be handled like a paintbrush 

Umberto Boccioni checks his theories about 
plastic dynamism interpenetration of planes si- 
multaneity of radiuses shadows echoes orches- 
trai masses of projectiles 

My ears drink in this tragic dawn at the 
telephone 

"Marinetti Marinetti get up I'm Azari get up 



254 



1 • I 




Umberto Boccioni, Developtnent of a Botile in Space (Sviluppo di una bottiglia nello spazio, 
no. 87), 1912. Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan. Courtesy Angelo Calmarmi 



and get over here right away just think last night 
they massacred ali of poor Boccioni's plastic 
structures I beg you come right over so we can 
save them" 

Absurdly entrusted to an envious passéist 
narrow-minded sculptor they were ripped apart 
by the workmen anxious to clear out a profìt- 
able part of the building and ali is ended 

The funereal courtyard is full of the moan- 
ing slaughter of the sublime plaster sculptures 
hacked into livid pieces that make me sob just 
to look at while Azari openly weeping picks 
up the pieces of a bottle and some force-lines 
and we leave with the pitiful white remains to 
paste them together and put them up again 

Vibrant and whole once again they triumph 
in Boccionian vermilion 

Futurist architecture was born with Antonio 
Sant'Elia while in a Paris stili echoing with the 
success of the first exhibit of Futurist painting I 
set up an exhibit of Boccioni's Futurist sculpture 

As an innately plastic painter he is anxious to 
try sculpting and we go together to visit 
Archipenko's studio 

Slavic starkness meaningful for the synthe- 
sizing energy it reveals does not entirely please 
Boccioni 

As we go out into streets alive with flashing 
lights and traffic snarls I step with ali my po- 
etic might on the accelerator of Boccioni's genius 

This accelerator is called pride and it's so sen- 
sitive it responds immediately to my pressure 

"Dear Boccioni there's no time to lose you're 
ready now for the great creative efforts we're 



demanding of you you must be a success as a 
sculptor by creating a sculpture of movement 
and certainly you must be encouraged by the 
birth of Orphism shaped by what Lhote calls 
sensitive Cubism and influenced by us and our 
discussions 

"Remember that Picasso created his Port of 
Le Havre because in reality we're the ones who 
persuaded him to give up his cold engineering 
style and the anatomical dissections of objects 
and to come over to our fiery lyricism that em- 
braces the universe including the modem elec- 
trified city we love" 

We return to Milan and in Boccioni's studio 
sculpted muscular shapes of speed are taking 
form and especially his great polymaterial ve- 
locities the first sculptures of ambience light and 
shadow made solid 

The ignition of Boccioni's genius having been 
switched on I return with him for the opening 
of the first show of Futurist sculpture at La 
Boétie the most famous gallery on the Street of 
artists 

An unforgettable afternoon for the almost di- 
vine fervor of our devotion before the miracles 
of art and this supreme new beauty 

A strange creative originality burned in the 
air brushing against our nerve ends like razor 
strokes imparting fresh energy 

At the door Guillaume Apollinaire — the 
egg-shaped fat almond oily high priest of nov- 
elty and eccentricity with a honeyed smile his 
big intelligent eyes, half-Polish half-Roman 
— whispers to me in Italiani 

"The aims of Futurism are bound to succeed 



and you're right ali the way I'm joining your 
words-in-freedom movement and I'il announce 
it publicly and you can announce it to this gath- 
ering of important Parisians" 

We greet Picasso Gleizes Lhote Delaunay and 
his wife Valmier the art dealer Rosenberg the 
art critic Fénéon the semi-Futurist philosopher 
Mercereau and the poet Salmon while Boccioni 
grips my hand and mutters 

"You're forward enough you do the talking 
because I don't know any French and it's ab- 
surd you know really absurd for me to try to 
speak in French off the cuff" 

"You're the one the public is interested in 
and as the most daring sculptor in the world 
you must do you understand must Futurism 
commands you improvise your ideas and ex- 
planations in French I'm sure you can do it" 

Boccioni launches into the strangest most tor- 
tured wheezing cut-up patched-up explosive 
flowing gesticulating propped-up lecture imag- 
inable and when I remember it he seems a prod- 
igy of prodigies 

Boccioni can't speak French but he has so 
many pretty prompters always providing the 
right word that he forces himself with come-on 
looks and gestures to explain plasticity affini- 
ties contrasts so that everyone understands ad- 
mires especially the beauties stretched out on 
red rugs under the bold musculature of the 
white plastic structures 

Polymaterial environment with surprises 
Tastéven a small carefully dressed gentleman 
looking like an important officiai of some min- 
istry comes over to greet me his blond goatee 
twitching and his little red Russian eyes sparkling 

"As director of the lecturers' group in Mos- 
cow I have the honor of inviting you to give a 
series of lectures in the larger Russian cities lec- 
tures for which you will be paid whatever you 
ask with half your fee in advance and traveling 
expenses do come if possible because they're 
waiting for you anxiously in Saint Petersburg 
and Moscow" 

I accept and run over to help out Boccioni 
tying together in one ad lib speech plastic dy- 
namism and the simultaneous essential surpris- 
ing quality of words-in-freedom and I announce 
that Guillaume Apollinaire has declared him- 
self a free-word Futurist and I'm pleased to see 
among the plumed hats of famous beautiful 
poetesses Gustave Kahn and the Parisianized 
American vers-libriste Vielé-Griffin author of La 
Chevauchée d'Yeldis both showing great empa- 
thy with me and Boccioni by approving of our 
undoubted victory over poetry and the human 
figure in order to poeticize the velocity of whole 
environments and freeze them forever 



255 



EXCERPTS FROM BOCCIONI'S DIARY 



The same complexity found in Boccioni's vi- 
sual works, the same intensity and depth of per- 
sonality caught in the perpetuai dialectic be- 
tween spirit and reality, between self-awareness 
and instinctive feeling, is reflected in his letters 
and diaries. These writings expose a diffìcult 
and tormented nature whose contradictions leap 
out from virtually every page. He incessantly 
hunts after new things to express and new ways 
to express them, berates his own incapacity and 
weakness, and wanders off into long mono- 
logues that hold up a mirror to his own dissat- 
isfaction. A unifying thread links the pages of 
his diary, his letters to family and friends, and 
his scattered notes: a sense of inner emptiness, 
along with the oft-repeated difficulty of put- 
ting into words the religious conviction — the 
feeling of something universal permeating ali 
things — that he experiences deep within him. 

The diary covers only the brief period from 
January 1907 to August 1908. It comprises three 
notebooks: the first from January 6 through Sep- 
tember 12, 1907; the second from the latter date 
through December 30 of the same year; and 
the third from January 2 through August 24, 
1908. In a later, wartime diary, kept from Au- 
gust 7 through October 27, 1915, he noted his 
impressions of life at the front, chiefly describ- 
ing things done and felt at particular moments 
of action. 



4 



Umberto Boccioni, I-We-Boccioni (Io noi Boccioni), 
ca. 1906. Photo: Luca Carri, Milan. Courtesy 
Angelo Calmarini 



The diary of 1907-1908 is an invaluable doc- 
ument. These years were ones of great desper- 
ation but also of most concentrated study. His 
mind was fllled with ideas he could sense but 
not express, and this awareness of how much 
he was falling short of his own aims gnawed at 
him incessantly. Thus, along with accounts of 
real-life activities and encounters, the diary of- 
fers succinct sketches of abstract theorizations, 
comments on his readings and on other artists, 
and intimate remarks concerning his sentimen- 
tal life or the opinions of artists and other per- 
sons he had met, often concealing the identities 
under code names. Boccioni emerges with the 
force of a Romantic hero assailed by doubts 
but forever holding high the grail of "creation" 
as the sole means of transcending and vanquish- 
ing an unknown and perhaps unknowable foe. 



March 14, 1907 

I have been out in the country to work and 
found nothing.The same old lines bore me, 
nauseate me, I am fed up with fields and little 
houses. And to think that when I first carne 
to Padua I was enthusiastic about them and 
hopeful. 

I must confess that I seek, seek, seek — and 
fmd nothing. Will I ever? Yesterday I was tired 



of the big city, today I desire it with ali my 
heart. Tomorrow what will I want? I feel that I 
want to paint what is new, the fruit of our in- 
dustriai times. I am nauseated by old walls, old 
palaces, old subjects based on reminiscence: I 
want to have my eye on the life of today. Fields, 
quiet things, little houses, woods, faces flushed 
and strong, workers' limbs, weary horses, etc. 
— that whole storehouse of modem sentimen- 
talism has bored me. Indeed, ali of modem art 
looks old to me. I want what is new, expressive, 
formidable! I want to cancel out ali the values I 
have known, know now, and am losing sight 
of I want to make things anew, rebuild on new 
bases! Ali of the past, however marvelous, op- 
presses me. I want the new! And I lack the ele- 
ments to conceive what stage we are in and 
what we need. 

What is this to be done with? With color? Or 
with drawing? With painting? With realistic 
tendencies that no longer satisfy me, with sym- 
bolist tendencies that please me in few artists 
and that I have never tried? With an idealism 
that attracts me, and yet I don't know how to 
make it concrete? 

It seems to me that today, while scientific 
analyses make us see the universe marvelously, 
art should make itself the interpreter of the 
mighty, inescapable resurgence of a new posi- 
tive idealism. Art and artists seem to me to be 
in conflict with science today. . . . There is a mis- 
understanding. Is what I am saying true, or am 
I mistaken? 

It is certainly true that if, in some fantastic 
way, I could go somewhere entirely new, after 
long study I would make new things. 

Now I feel myself the product of my time, 
and it seems to me that everything here in Padua 
is old. This feeling extends to ali of Italy, al- 
most, except for a little of the North, and from 
it I draw the conclusion that we are ali living 
outside our environment. Our feverish age 
makes old and obsolete whatever was turned 
out yesterday. What can be inspiring if not 
purely technical from an ambience that is no 
longer alive today? Everything in Italy seems 
obsolete to me: an enormous museum for things 
to do with art, an enormous junk shop for prac- 
tical things. 

The streets, lines, people, sentiments ali smeli 
of yesterday, aggravated by the indefinable odor 
of today. We live in a historical dream. This 
delights foreigners, who come here exactly for 




256 



repose, but I shudder to think that twentieth- 
century historians will have nothìng to say about 
Italy. 

March 28, 1907 

As repeatedly for some time now, music is 
more and more in my mind, which was never 
before the case with me. I understand Beetho- 
ven intuitively and grasp almost ali of Wagner. 
I dream of giving my pictures Music's power 
to stir the feelings, to suggest through form 
the flights of the spirit. I first had that idea at 
the Luxembourg in Paris in August 1906; I was 
about to leave for Russia, and I thought as soon 
as I arrived inTsaritsyn Iwould paint a picture 
called Visions of the Volga. Though I didn't do 
it, there were going to be camels, muzhiks, the 
Volga, and other things. Certainly Balla is los- 
ing his sway over me, but I'm far from being 
completely free of him. Yesterday Marna left, 
and I am alone and undone. 



Sunday, July 7, 1907 

More and more I realize that the organic de- 
fect in Modem Art is the absence of universal- 
ity, or at least of what I cali that feeling for 
poetry that fills ancient works and makes the 
artist's song spread with loving exaltation 
throughout everything he creates. The exhaus- 
tive analyses made in our century have resulted 
in the creation of specialists. This explains the 
lack of universality in modem works. I believe 
that what is needed is a great mind, with the 
courage and strength to synthesize modem 
knowledge and create a tme work. 

Ultimately, though, I think our difficulties 
are no greater than those the old artists encoun- 
tered. What is needed is faith and talent: This 
means giving a good solid kick to ali of it and 
going back to raising ourselves up on our own. 

Looking at the drawings in the Accademia I 
could convince myself that not one of the old 
works lacked the elements that make up the 
world! Virtually every picture, every drawing 
had its own verse to express everything. The 
painter-poet's eye passed from the loving de- 
sign of a drapery fold to the depths of the human 
eye, to the grace of a young girl, to the soft- 
ness of grass, to the majesty of woods, skies, 
horizons, and seas, to the serene goodness of 
animals; and ali of it, made with colors and a 
loving hand, carne to the eye of whoever was 
admiring it with the caress of a thousand mem- 
ories, a thousand existences. That was life, that 
was verism. Today, however. . . 



Milan, September 21, 1907 

I have sold a little decorative thing for 25 lire 
and have got an order for a publicity piece. Let 
us hope things continue well. I have found a 
nice room and am dreaming of immense work 
and immense calmness, of a busy future full of 
pictures, drawings, etchings, decorations 
— everything, everything. And above ali, of 
singing of this modem epoch of ours that al- 
most ali artists detest. Yesterday was a good 
day, working things out with healthy enthusi- 
asm for the new forms. I really want to find 
the way to express them and make them ac- 
ceptable to great numbers of people. It seems 
impossible that artists in the past hated their 
age in the same way that today's artists hate the 
present. And it is impossible that the artists in 
the sixteenth century — even granting that our 
art is stili developing — dreamed of past art with 
the same nostalgia that we dream of theirs. This 
is stupid, a sign of weakness and degeneration. 
Art is not over and done with, as weak-brained 
sentimentalists wail; it is undergoing a trans- 
formation. Humanity is moving forward and 
is changing profoundly, just as a man changes 
from a boy — a man of genius, of course, and 
humanity is itself a divine universal genius. 

The great heart and brain of humanity today 
are moving toward a maturity made from pre- 
cision and exactness and positivism. Its poetry 
is of the straight line and the computation, with 
everything becoming rectangular, square, pen- 
tagonal, etc. I find this in ali the functions of 
life. It seems to me that everything is moving 
toward either the decisively finite or the infi- 
nite: Half-truths or dim mists are no longer 
satisfying. 

Maybe it has always been so, but I believe 
there is as much material for poetry today as in 
times gone by. The form changes, and the art- 
ists for whom the form is a religious heritage 
to be preserved have become ridiculous con- 
servati ves. The world is entering one more new 
era and seeks real substance for it; conversely, 
Art must become a function of life, and artists 
must not, ought not hold themselves disdain- 
fully aloof (I feel I have pronounced a blas- 
phemy): Art is too universal to do anything of 
the sort. 

Artists today are out of step with the process 
of transformation, for scientists are studying 
and creating, living and breathing along with 
the universal spirit that lies ali around them, 
but artists are creating dead things, and in a 
language unknown to the many, and even to 
the few. Yet it cannot be that the era of art has 
ended while that of science has taken over, that 



humanity no longer has need of song. There is 
stili and always an infinite joy and an infinite 
sorrow that laughs and weeps. But what for- 
mula will render human inspiration? Is it not 
always the same? But with what means? That 
is the problemi Unfortunately my mind be- 
comes confused and blocked, and my conclu- 
sions frighten me. 

Today my thinking ran along joy fully, and I 
could explain why I am against everything in 
art that looks hazy and disordered. It strikes me 
that my temperament is compounded of preci- 
sion and scruples, more attuned to the poetry 
of mathematics and the steel in humankind to- 
day. I feel the need for geometry in my work, 
for calculating and reckoning things up toward 
a totality that may be rigid but is well organized 
and clear to the eye. Nothing can be done about 
this: I feel it is so, and will continue to. 

A + A = B because 
2+2-4 

I may be wrong, but that is how I feel, for now 
at least. 



Sunday, December 21, 1907 

Fundamentally I am in a cold period. The 
noble tension that kept me up these last days 
has slackened off. I work little at art and am 
indifferent to humble matters. I am earning. 
enough and spending nothing on myself. I am 
making a start on the life I desire: That is the 
only progress. Am reading Previati's Technique 
of Painting and feel humiliated in the face of 
such technical erudition. I am a total ignora- 
mus. But what can I do — how, where, when 
can I study ali that chemistry and physics? Life 
barely allows me time for doing the petty things 
that have to be done! 

I am reading Mùntz's book on the Renais- 
sance. The words he writes about Leonardo, 
Michelangelo, Bramante, Raphael make my 
own small self fade away like snow in jthe sun. 
How can I believe myself to be somebody in 
the face of those giants? 

God for me is Nature with her forms and 
colors, yet I strike myself as a novice priest who 
likens himself to God just because he is begin- 
ning to babble a mass! Am I babbling? 

Today an article on Wagner's Twilight of the 
Gods really laid me out — what were those great 
ones like? Their souls? their bodies? their desires? 

I am becoming more and more stupid and 



257 



mediocre ali the rime, yet I hope for — what? 
Glory, money, honors! and then what? And is 
my youth worth ali that? 

Leopardi also said it, but I repeat it or, bet- 
ter, I feel it too: Ne ver has the idea of the end 
so troubled me as now. 

I work, work, work . . . and why? I will die, 
and then? Ali my things scattered here and there 
or on junk dealers' counters . . . and then? Some- 
one will weep, someone will laugh, and then? 
People will love one another, run after one an- 
other, kill one another, and then? May my 
mother at least live long enough for my work 
to bring her happiness for the rest of the jour- 
ney And then? 

Milan, January 2, 1908 

[beginning a new volume of the diary] 

To the girl of the first kiss; 

to the friend of my young years; 

to the companion perhaps of my 

triumphant maturity, I dedicate 

this with love 

(night of January 2, 1908) 

"It is a beautiful thing to live on after death" 
(from a sixteenth-century print) 

"To be a character, to have the strength to 
live without friends, alone with one's own 
ideal: that is the freedom to boast of. To it 
are opposed the human proprieties, respect 
for one's parents, the family. . ." 
(from Henrik Ibsen) 

With the gift of this book one of my many 
desires is gratified. A book in which to record 
thoughts and actions of my life. A good day 
today. Calmness and hope. Tomorrow I abso- 
lutely begin to work! For some days did noth- 
ing but loaf about, suffering no grave misery 
because of it . . . Yet my goal seems far off, con- 
fused, undefinable. Tomorrow everything will 
start anew! My spirit is stili humble and reli- 
gious. Have spent some good moments with 
Her. Such good sense and such simplicity. After 
Marna and Amelia [his sister], she is the only 
person I can devote an hour to without every- 
thing being thrown into doubt. But doubt and 
discontent are always with me ... I should like 
to rise, rise, rise! I think of Baudelaire's "There, 
ali is order, beauty, sensual pleasure I 
am empty and futile because I am not work- 
ing: Take heart. I have seen a French poster that 
was not perfect but extraordinary in its mod- 
em expression. The usuai idea comes back to 
me: Will posterity look at things like that or at 



our own pictures, which are more or less ego- 
tistical, directionless, without point or purpose, 
hollow, insane, cretinous, pan dering, and ali the 
other things that can be said about them? I don't 
know the answer yet; no one writes to me, 
which almost pleases me. How will the new 
year be? The last one had a so-so ending but it 
was full of good will, much better than the 
year before. I am glad I made Marna enjoy her- 
self I must end with a prayer to the Unknown, 
to the Great Mother: "May I be given the hu- 
mility and the strength to face the sacred mys- 
teries as an innocent, without ambition or 
falseness. May my hands create a song of ado- 
ration, of exaltation for ali, from the biade of 
grass to the tree, from a droplet to the immense 
sky, from a worm to man! May ali things be 
transformed in my mind in accord with the su- 
preme Truth, passing no judgment for good or 
evil, nor for the beautiful or the ugly; may I, 
while constantly loving and studying what is 
nearest to my dream, never lose my compre- 
hension of the universe!" 



February 1, 1908 

For two weeks now 1 have not had the en- 
ergy to take out this book and write. I am mov- 
ing ahead in the life I want, a life of concentrated 
thought and work. To teli the truth I am not 
studying much, but my mind is quite alert and 
fairly clear in pursuing my chosen aim. Soon it 
will go better. I have bought three magnificent 
books on Dùrer, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt: 
will pay for them in monthly installments of 3 
lire. The masthead for the Lavoro Italiano was 
rejected after repeated changes and corrections. 
Signor Lombardo wanted to compensate me 
but I refused; I wish I had done the same with 
Ricordi. 

I take my only recreation now in contem- 
plating the works of these three supreme mas- 
ters, and a few hours spent with Her. We have 
drawn closer again since a long discussion full 
of my justifiable reproaches. I cherish her com- 
pany and feel I will never open myself up as 
much to any other woman. 

Rembrandt staggers me with his marvelous 
pictorial vision of any and every object he sees. 
He seems the father of the modem luminists, 
but how remote he is from my ideal! I feel like 
the very opposite of him! So many vulgar forms, 
so much mere prose goes through his extraor- 
dinary eye! How paltry the form in ali, or al- 
most ali, his engravings! Only his immense love 
and hard work seem to me to have saved him 
from mediocrity. In his paintings Rembrandt 



is quite another person, the wizard of impasto 
and the brush . . . yet so many clumsy heads. It's 
true that I don't know what Flemish [Dutch] 
art was like when he began. I don't much like 
Flemish genre pictures and interiors except by 
the greatest masters (I am a real ignoramus), 
and for me Rembrandt is the man who took 
flight, true enough, but was held to the com- 
monplace and prosaic, by the coarseness, the 
shapeless fat roundness of the race that inspired 
him. I will study him further because such lov- 
ing effort humbles me, but for the moment I am 
at a loss between his magnificent things and his 
puerile if not outright horrible deficiencies. , . . 

Michelangelo! How can I even venture with 
my poor words to speak of Him. Who am I? 
Why am I writing? For myself? Yes,and per- 
haps that permits me to say that I bow down 
and worship. I worship everything about him, 
even his excessive servility to the classical! Oh 
mysterious power of genius! I cannot always 
follow him at the point where I see him cross- 
ing a threshold and entering into the Mystery. 
So I worship, and that is enough! Yet I also 
love to think of him — I do not know why — in 
the midst of such endless seas of work, of pas- 
sion, of grief and serenity, going humbly and 
sadly to meet the divine Vittoria Colonna in 
the church high on Monte Cavallo in Rome. 
What did he have to say to her, the widow of 
the marchese of Pescara? I know he exhorted her 
to place her hope in God . . . Oh infinite poetry 
of the world! Moments like these, the remem- 
brance of an episode far removed in time, can 
rise imperceptibly into my consciousness and 
become attached to some chance noise or some 
visible shape nearby. ... I cannot put into words 
what I feel — to say that tears come to my eyes 
is laughable. Perhaps in pictures [like] a musi- 
cian in his music or a poet in verses, some- 
thing will come of what I was saying four lines 
above that has already slìpped my mind. 

Marna is stili in bed; in a few days they will 
operate on her. 

February 13, 1908 

I have spent three days in hell, a more pain- 
ful crisis than I have had in months. Everything 
had collapsed . . , art, life, everything! More 
and more I feel it is ìmpossible to live in this 
horrible world: Every so often I feel myself 
stumbling into obstacles — barriers, traps, filth, 
let's admit it — that aren't found in people like 
me (that is, of the same breed). Everything 
strikes me as rough and harsh; my sensibilities 
are wounded in every part. Things and people 



258 




Boccioni in his studio with Head + House + Light 
(Testa + casa + luce, 1911-12; Iater destroyed) , ca. 1912. 
Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan. Courtesy Angelo Calmarmi 



humiliate me; they beat me down or at least 
make fun of me. Really I feel secure only with 
Marna and Amelia. And though I am making 
progress I always end up fìnding myself talk- 
ing with somebody and then the torment be- 
gins: I am a weakling! Everyone else seems to 
be harsh, stupid, and vicious, getting by on 
ready-made phrases and ideas, when I come on 
the scene, talk, and open myself up so I can 
learn: To convince myself I strip myself bare, 
trying to make myself more forceful and ac- 
cessible to even the slightest kind of understand- 
ing, and then the bully I am talking to laughs 
at me and lashes out at me. This happens to me 
with everybody\ It must come from the longing 
for affection, for communion, that torments me. 
Much as past experience makes me keep up my 
guard and be suspicious, when I come across 
someone who meets me halfway and talks with 
me according to his own capacity and nature, 
and I see the little world that stirs itself in the 
creature and moves within the universal immen- 
sity, I am almost always impelled to encourage 
him, in spite of myself, to reveal to him some- 
thing in or outside of myself that might con- 
sole him as others have done for me, and with 
my gratitude. . . . But what a mistake! Immedi- 
ately I sense that ali the goodness I put into my 
offering offends that person. Suddenly he puts 
up his guard, takes the measure of his weap- 
ons, finds my weak points, and strikes out at 
me at the first chance. This has happened with 
everyone, even my most intimate friend, -and 
will always happen to me. If I confìded ali this 
to someone I know I would already be weep- 
ing for having said it. Right away I would be 
confronted with the usuai phrases about Chris- 
tianity, paganism, Nietzsche and individualism, 
egoism, egotism, and ali the rest. Right now, 
though, talking to myself with no one to laugh 
or interrupt, I admit that I don't know what is 
in me, Christian or pagan, humble or proud, 
weak or strong. I know that I carne into the 
world smiling and I will leave it weeping! Ex- 
perience has introduced drop by drop ali the 
hatred, suffering, and bitterness that afflict me 
now. Everyone, from cherished friend to indif- 
ferent acquaintance, has stabbed me in the back. 
Everything I have been taught is false and serves 
to bolster up the universal rabbie; and my de- 
sire, my dream of living with sincerity and love, 
is a bubble that will burst anew with every day, 
though each day I will try hard to blow it up 
again. Alas, I see no remedy for ali this but 
death. 

Here a hundred people would laugh at me, 
crying that everybody knows that this is an old 



story, but I confess I fmd it terribly new. 

What exasperates me is people self-assuredly 
accepting or rejecting things I haven't decided 
for myself and won't ever be able to. 

Faced with existence, most people have a 
self-assurance that dismays me. Where do they 
find it? Can they be more religious or more 
humble than I am? Do they have more fervor 
than I in working things out, attacking a prob- 
lem, experiencing a joy received? How do they 
go through theìr day without sensing in them- 
selves something terrible, hollow, useless?Have 
they never looked around them? Given serious 
thought to anything? Stopped to look at water, 
at grass, at animals? 

And the lawgivers — but where in the world 
did they find a model to go by, and if they have 
found one, can it possibly satisfy them sincerely? 
Are they liars or sages? 

Yet this I know: To go on living, one needs a 
religion, a faith, and I feel that my spirit has it, 
but it is terrifying because it is limitless, not 
finite. To find a little security, must one fall 
back on humiliating dogma? And the great men 
who lived in times when their religious dogma 
was never questioned, were they sure of them- 
selves? To reassure myself, must I create a tan- 
gible symbol, bum incense before it, kneel down 
and worship it? But the countryside, the city, 



human beings, beasts from the fly to the eagle, 
from the grub to man, from moss to the oak 
tree — these symbols, these very deities, should 
they not be enough? The works of man, the 
mysterìes of the animai mind, the clouds, the 
waters, do they not fili me with joy and love? . . . 
yet something is missing. Perhaps it is that I 
have never been strong enough to carry through 
and fulfill what I have promised myself to do. 
And if that is the cause, am I so low and base as 
to need the whip laid on to make me do what I 
say? And if the whip made me do it, would I 
be any more content? . . . 

March 22, Ì908 

Sunday. I have become a different person in 
the past few days. What do I feel? I don't work, 
don't earn anything, wander about, read, think. 
And when I set about thinking in my relative 
solitude I feel differently, or better. The ideal of 
love and purity I have always felt in my deepest 
heart comes back to me in a more orderly fash- 
ion. There is in me an ever deeper religious- 
ness, a growing tenderness, and a wish to lighten 
and elevate myself. 

Certainly I am changing in some way; being 
alone makes me turn inward. Soon I shall over- 
come many bad habits that upset the musical 



259 



harmony that should govern my adult existence. 
Within me is a voice I have never managed to 
smother entirely. Friends as foolish as myself, 
books misunderstood, my free and passionate 
youth, these have led me to believe in a differ- 
ent self from my real one. Yet I hear something 
from that voice within me. What is it? The ques- 
tìon is so serious and profound that I dare not 
try to analyze it further. I sense many inner fears 
and doubts that do not let me be sincere, and 
so I continue to wait. 

The facts I am going to write down now will 
explain many thìngs to me. I have read (I, at 
my age, with my life) My Prisons [the memoirs 
of Silvio Pellico, published in 1832 after eight 
years' imprisonment for rebellion agaihst Aus- 
trian rule in northern Italy, recording the spiri- 
tual crisis and religious conversion undergone 
by this former liberal, a member of the revolu- 
tionary secret society of the Carbonari], and I 
have been deeply moved by them! I must admit 
they shook me. I feel that I could not say this 
to anyone else without shame or embarrass- 
ment, yet it is so. I am aware of everything 
deficient, petty, mean, weak, one-sided in them, 
stili . . . something directly touches that within 
us which, I believe, may evolve in future cen- 
turies and bring shape to a higher humanity. 
With these words, I am putting down three- 



quarters of my past life! Offences ought to be 
received with an understanding smile and a 
pacific heart, not with a philosophy for savage 
brutes. What displeases me in him [Pellico] is 
his clinging to outward form: He rules out ali 
salvation outside the Catholic Church and re- 
joices when a Protestant foreswears his faith; he 
speaks of order, authority, and government, de- 
nouncing Voltaire's philosophy as petty and oth- 
ers as impious or worse; he makes much too 
much of the cliques and spites which seem to 
him to have grown worse in his time; and he 
goes too far in justifying confession, commu- 
nion, saints, and the Virgin Mary. ... A while 
back I would have laughed but now I deplore it 
that, with the evidence he had, he strived so 
greatly to find strength by looking backward 
at the past, not forward to the future. Why could 
he not see a spasmodic quest for the truth,that 
is, for divinity even in the philosophies closest 
to atheism? For me, every philosophy is a search 
for God. And to consider this today, on the ève 
of universal brotherhood, as the monopoly of 
one church is either factious partisanship or 
weakness of mind or both. I can understand 
why the liberals of the time inveighed against 
his book. 

I cannot submit to any Absolute, for the Ab- 
solute is in ourselves. That same aspiration to 




Boccioni working on his portrait of Ferruccio Busoni 
(no. 86) in 1916 while at Pallanza on Lake Maggiore. 
Photo: Luca Carrà, Milan. Courtesy Angelo Calmarini 




perfection that invades us when we think of 
Christ the Son of God, of the Revelation, and 
the dogmas is what I hear in my own blind, 
inward, profound voice. For the present I dare 
not give it a name. Is it Art? Is it a musical 
need? Aesthetic? 

Art imitates Nature, Nature is God. The im- 
itation of God is aspiration to perfection, is re- 
ligion. Art is religious. 

Oh! Ideal, thou, thou alone exists\ I cannot re- 
cali the source of that exclamation, but now it 
is mine. 

Whatever Silvio Pellico's deductions, his book 
deserves its fame. It has brought me understand- 
ing and as has happened so often before, it fell 
into my hands at a moment when I was tor- 
mented by similar problems. Who brings events 
like that to pass? 

I owe to it that yesterday, after one of my 
usuai ignoble angry outbursts against Marna, I 
was able to repent as never before and put my 
arms around her and kiss her. 

Notes for a Diary 

[Internai evidence suggests that these scattered 
notes were written after August 1908, when the 
third volume of the diary breaks off, and dur- 
ing the formation of the group of Futurist paint- 
ers in 1910. This event wrought a virtually total 
change in Boccioni's personality, from intro- 
spective psychologizing and self-analysis to ob- 
jective theorizing, an extroverted delight in 
verbal imagery, and the satisfaction of acting 
together with like-minded friends.] 

The greatest man reveals himself to be so to- 
tally without real power that one can under- 
stand the desire to break away from him, to 
flee, to make oneself bigger than he. . . . But 
perhaps living and creating is the only revenge, 
the only possible insult against the unknown 
which has already left its mark on us and from 
which we will never escape. 

The world as masterpiece and what exists as 

idea. 

Idea of war. 

Idea of love. 

Idea of friendship, etc. 

Idea of the absolute and therefore of God. 

Great tragedies as exemplars of how impos- 
sible it is for the absolute to carry over into the 
relative. Everything strives to express itself, that 
is, to define itself, therefore to perish. Love and 
death, the beginning and end of the self-deter- 
mination of life. 



260 



. . . by impetus, a little by will. 

I fear everything for my art and more than 
ali I fear becoming skeptical. I have observed 
that when I have centered my thoughts ori a 
person, that person, as if moved by a superior 
and inimicai force, acts toward me, without 
wishing to do so, in exactly those ways that 
have always plunged me into suffering and 
despair. 

This must not happen anymore. A good deal 
of it is my own fault. The impossibility for me 
of settling for half measures, the continuai fall- 
ing into extremes, my absolute exactingness, 
my furious desire to be loved, to forget myself 
by dìssolving my individuality in another whom 
I sense will mediate between myself and the 
infinite — ali this does not make my relation with 
another person easy or smooth. 

It is extremely painful for me to acknowl- 
edge my loneliness, but I must, for I have made 
it. I have no friends because their struggle for 
success makes them false and cruel. If I have 
women friends, it is difficult to know why. . . 
this is to be figured out. To make a quick judg- 
ment, it seems to me that for a woman friend- 
ship is cold-blooded and cairn and therefore not 
satisfying, because true friendship is always 
warm and fervid; when by a miracle [friendship 
occurs] in like-minded persons, it obeys the 
physical law of communicating volumes: What 
penetrates the one goes over into the other until 
an equilibrium is reached. Or else friendship 
for a woman is hot-blooded and agitated and 
then leads to love — that is, to the end of every- 
thing. This is because I believe in love as an 
absolute idea which completes itself with the 
leap into the infinite. And if this is in a work 
of art, which means the union of opposites, 
that leap can be grasped and fixed with a rhythm 
of lines and colors and sounds so that it rav- 
ishes for an instant the soul of anyone who com- 
prehends it every time he puts himself in contact 
with the work. It is logicai that the union of 
two opposites seek to become absolute love; 
both being physical entities in continuous trans- 
formation, they must adapt themselves to at- 
tain it and so perish, or live on miserably like 
everyone else because the absolute union cannot 
be repeated. 



In a few lines I can hardly explain and reveal 
ali the struggles within me now, and give any 
idea of the continuai attacks of my criticai sense 
against ali that made up my consciousness 
yesterday. 

This I can say, that nothing in me remains 



standing. I have uprooted ali of it and what- 
ever stili stands is tottering. 

Yet, if some tendency is predominating in 
me at this time, it is the spasmodic search for 
reconstruction. That reconstruction is constantly 
surveyed by my criticai sense, which keeps me 
from falling into a dogma already left behind. 

Ali of my work recently has been a search 
for the prime cause: in art and therefore in life. 
I have tried to make every act of my will corre- 
spond as closely as possible to the motives which 
I feel constitute my inner edifice. 

I have sought to ensure that the answers to 
the questions I posed myself would correspond 
to the architectonic necessities of the pian that 
was in me. I have observed that many ideas I 
fought for so hard in the past were simply ac- 
quired ideas that were superimposed on what 
was fundamental in me. 

Those poorly digested ideas impelled me to 
generalize. Generalizing, I lost the concept of 
myself or mislaid it temporarily, remaining dis- 
armed and at the mercy of the first corner. 

This indetermination, this chaotic tendency, 
proved open to any and every idea, and so I did 
not take on ideas as materials for my construc- 
tion but put myself at the service of ali the ideas 
that happened to pass through my brain. 

This eclecticism, this dilettantism, brought 
me annoyance and suffering. They brought on 
the malaise of someone who feels himself at- 
tached to nothing; they gave me the doubt of 
someone who has no faith in triumph; they gave 
me the apathy, skepticism, and intolerance of 
the scientific temperament. 

I have put together everything I have observed 
in the character of our time, and I have found 
that what makes us unsure is the lack of a faith, 
of something beyond questioning. We who are 
forever at the same point in facing the infinite 
lack a new finite that could be the symbol of 
our new conception of the infinite. 



Philosophically we have demolished the con- 
cept of a God as creator and judge, and in con- 
sequence his representatives on earth have lost 
our respect socially. Art, naturally enough, re- 
flects these demolitions and goes its way blind- 
ly. A kind of fantastic interpretation of nature 
has been made in landscapes, but we must ad- 
mit that this has been more an attitude of iso- 
lated intellectuals than emotions of a universal 
aspiration. 

And so we are without religion, without so- 
ciety, without art. 

Therefore a philosophy must now arise for a 




Boccioni in his military uniform with his 
mother and sister. Photo: Luciano Pollini. 
Courtesy private archive, Padua 



new religion and thus the need of a dogma; it is 
necessary that the ambition and will of one in- 
dividuai or many must make a new society arise. 
As soon as we have this, the era of a great art 
will have begun. We need to define some things 
in which we can believe. 

What I cali love needs, if it is to repeat itself, 
a spirituality perhaps impossible of attainment 
for physical beings; and if we think of the bes- 
tiai life that most men lead, the sublime gro- 
tesqueness of human suffering over questions 
of love is seen at once, and perhaps also the 
beauty of doublé suicides after a night of love 
or the tragedy from a no or a yes. 

Remember Tristan and Isolde? 

What can exist between a superior man and 
a superior woman is rather more a matter of 
head than heart. Many times — but it is useless 
to say it here, first because it is a lengthy mat- 
ter, then because I am tired of writing: It is not 
my trade. If my friends cali me the philosopher 
of our group that doesn't flatter me much and I 
don't believe it. 



261 



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Castelfranco and Valsecchi 1956 
G. Castelfranco and M. Valsecchi. Pittura e 
scultura italiana dal 1910 al 1930. Rome, 1956 
[exh. cat.]. 

Cecchi 1912 

E. Cecchi. [Untitled arride]. La Tribuna, 
Feb. 17, 1912. 

Cecchi 1913 

. "Esposizione romane: La mostra 

futurista." Il Marzocco (Florence), March 23, 
1913. 

Coquiot 1914 

G. Coquiot. Cubistes,futuristes f passéistes. Paris, 
1914 [2d ed. 1923]. 

Corriere della Sera 1910 

"La mostra d'estate alla Permanente di Venezia." 
Corriere della Sera (Milan), July 17, 1910. 

Corriere della Sera 191 1 

"La prima esposizione d'arte libera." Corriere 

della Sera (Milan), May 2, 1911. 

Costantini 1933 

V. Costantini. "Cronache milanese: Umberto 
Boccioni." Emporium (Bergamo), no. 78 (1933), 
pp. 127-31. 

Costantini 1934 

. Pittura italiana contemporanea dalla fine 

dell '800 ad oggi. Milan, 1934. 

Crispolti 1986 

E. Crispolti. Storia e critica del Futurismo. Bib- 
lioteca universale Laterza, 172. Rome and 
Bari, 1986. 



Curjel 1951 

H. Curjel. "Bemerkungen zum Futurismus." 
Das Kunstwerk (Baden-Baden) 5, no. 3 (1951), 
pp. 5-13. 

Damigella 1972 

A. M. Damigella. "Modernismo, Simbolismo, 
Divisionismo, arte sociale a Roma dal 1900 al 
1911." In: 1870-1914, Aspetti sociale a Roma. 
Rome, 1972 [exh. cat.]. 

Degand and Arp 1957 

L. Degand andj. Arp. "La collection Hjarry] 
et Lfydia] Winston au Musée de Detroit." 
Aujourd'hui (Paris), no. 15 (Dee. 1957), 
pp. 30-31. 

De Grada 1962 

R. De Grada. Boccioni: Il mito del moderno. 
Milan, 1962. 

De Micheli 1959 

M. De Micheli. Le avanguardie artistiche del 
'900. Milan, 1959. 

DeWittl933 

A. DeWitt. "Umberto Boccioni incisore. " 
Dedalo 13, sect. 2 (1933), pp. 116-26. 

Del Guercio 1980 

A. Del Guercio. La pittura del '900. Turin, 1980. 
D'Harnoncourtl980 

A. D'Harnoncourt. "The Fist of Boccioni 
Meets Miss Flic Flic Chiap Chiap. " Art News 
(New York) 79, no. 9 (Nov. 1980), pp. 110-16. 

Difesa 1 91 Oa 

"La mostra d'estate a Palazzo Pesaro." 
La Difesa (Venice), July 19-20, 1910. 

Difesa 1910b 

La Difesa (Venice), Aug. 17-18, 1910. 
Difesa 191 Oc 

La Difesa (Venice), Oct. 21-22, 1910. 
Dinamo 1933a 

Dinamo Futurista (Rovereto) 1, no. 1 (Feb. 1933). 
Dinamo 1933b 

"Meravigliosa spirale boccioniana." Dinamo 
Futurista (Rovereto) 1, nos. 3-5 (June 1933). 

Emporium 1917 

"La mostra Boccioni a Milano." Emporium 
(Bergamo) 45, Jan. 1917. 

Fagiolo 1971 

M. Fagiolo dell'Arco. "Boccioni." Bolaffi Arte, 
no. 14 (1971), pp. 50-52. 

Francastel 1959 

P. Francastel. "Il Futurismo e il suo tempo." 
La Biennale di Venezia 9, nos. 36-37 (1959), 
pp. 2-10. 



263 



Francoeur 1967 

G. Francoeur. "The Winston Collection." 
Chicago Mid-West Art 3, no. 3 (March 1967), 
pp. 7-9. 

Gazzetta di Venezia 1910a 

"La mostra d'estate a Palazzo Pesaro. " Gazzetta 

di Venezia (Venice), July 16, 1910. 

Gazzetta di Venezia 1910b 

Gazzetta di Venezia (Venice), Oct. 21, 1910. 

Gazzettino 1910 

"La mostra d'estate a Ca' Pesaro." // Gazzettino 
(Venice), July 17, 1910. 

Georges-Michel 1912 

Georges-Michel. "Les Futuristes expliquent 
leurs oeuvres." Gii Blas (Paris), Feb. 7, 1912. 

Gerhardus 1977 

M. and D. Gerhardus. Kubismus und Futurismus. 
Freiburg, Basel, and Vienna, 1977. 

Giani 1950 

G. Giani. Il Futurismo, 1910-1916. Venice, 1950. 
Giarratana 1910 

A. Giarratana. "Sensazioni veneziane." La 
Provincia di Brescia (Brescia), Sept. 6, 1910. 

Giedion-Welcker 1960 

C. Giedion-Welcker. Contemporary Sculpture. 
New York, 1960. 

Golding 1972 

J. Golding. Boccioni's Unique Forms oj Continu- 
ity in Space. Newcastle upon Tyne, 1972. 

Guzzi 1976 

V. Guzzi, F. Bellonzi, et al. Futurismo. Rome, 
1976 [exh. cat.]. 

Italia industriale 1905 

L'Italia industriale ed artistica (Rome), May-June, 
1905. 

Jullian 1966 

R. Jullian. Le Futurisme et lapeinture italienne. 
Paris, 1966. 

Kozloff 1973 

M. Kozloff. Cubismi Futurism. New York, 1973. 
Kramer 1971 

H. Kramer. "The Cubist Epoch." Art in 
America (New York) 59, no. 2 (March 1971), 
pp. 51-57. 

Kramer 1980 

. "The 'Brutal Ideology' at the Heart 

of Futurism." New York Times, Dee. 14, 1980, 
sect. 2, p. 41. 

Krauss 1977 

R. E. Krauss. Passages in Modem Sculpture. 
New York, 1977. 



Kuh 1962 

K. Kuh. "Landmarks of Modem Art." Saturday 
Review (New York), Jan. 27, 1962, p. 31. 

Kuh 1965 

. Break- Up: The Core of Modem Art. 

Greenwich, Conn., 1965. 

Lacerba 1913 

Lacerba, Oct. 15, 1913 [illustrati on]. 
Lacerba 1914 

Lacerba, March 15, 1914 [illustration]. 
Licht 1967 

F. Licht. Sculpture, 19th and20th Centuries: A 
History of Western Sculpture. Greenwich, Conn., 
1967. 

Lista 1986 

G. Lista. Il Futurismo. Milan, 1986. 
Longhi 1913 

R. Longhi. "I pittori futuristi." La Voce (Flor- 
ence) 5, no. 15 (Aprii 10, 1913). 

Longhi 1914. 

. Scultura futurista: Boccioni. Florence, 

1914. 

Luzzatto 1924 

G. C. Luzzatto. "Boccioni." La Giustizia 
(Reggio Emilia), March 14, 1924. 

Magagnato 1967 

I. Magagnato. "Boccioni: 1912-1913." Notizie 
Olivetti (Ivrea), no. 91 (Dee. 1967). 

Marinetti 1927 

F. T. Marinetti, ed. Umberto Boccioni: Opera 
completa. Foligno, 1927. 

Marrits 1970 

L. E. Marrits. Modeled Portrait Sculpture. South 
Brunswick, N.J., 1970. 

Martin 1968 

M. W. Martin. Futurist Art and Theory: 
1909-1915. Oxford, 1968. 

Martini 1965 

A. Martini. "Boccioni: Un libro e una notizia. " 
Paragone (Florence) 16, no. 185 (July 1965), 
pp. 61-67. 

Mastrigli 1913 

F. Mastrigli. "La conferenza futurista di Boccioni 
nel foyer del Teatro Costanzi." La Vita (Rome), 
Feb. 27, 1913. 

Mazzariol 1958 

G. Mazzariol. Pittura italiana contemporanea. 
Bergamo, 1958. 

Mazzariol 1959 

. "La via dei Futuristi italiani." La 



Biennale di Venezia9, nos. 36-37 (1959), 
pp. 11-20. 

Mellquistl958 

J. Mellquist. "La collection Winston." XX e 
siede (Paris) 20 (n.s.), no. 11 (1958), n.p. 

Munari 1967 

C. Munari. Gli artisti di Ca* Pesaro. Rovereto 
and Bolzano, 1967. 

Nicodemi and Bezzola 1935-39 
G. Nicodemi and M. Bezzola, La galleria d'arte 
moderna: Boccioni. Part 1: 1 dipinti I. Milan, 
1935. Part 2: Le sculture. Milan, 1938. Part 3: 

I dipinti II. Milan, 1939. 

Olivier 1933 

F. Olivier. Picasso et ses amis. Preface by 
F. Léautaud. Paris, 1933. 

Orazi 1925 

V Orazi. "Freud, la psicanalisi e l'arte. " 

II Secolo (Milan) 24, no. 12 (1925), pp. 807-12. 

Pacini 1977 

P. Pacini. "Un inedito e un 'restaturo' di 
Boccioni." Critica d'Arte (Florence), 
nos. 154-56, July-Dec. 1977. 

Pastonchi 1950 

F. Pastonchi, "Boccioni." Cahiers d'Art 25, 
no. 1 (1950), pp. 33-44. 

Pearlstein 1961 

P. Pearlstein. "Futurism and Some Other 
Corrupt Forms." Art News (New York) 60, 
no. 4 (summer 1961), pp. 30-33. 

Perocco 1958 

G. Perocco. I primi espositori di Ca' Pesaro. 
Venice, 1958 [exh. cat.]. 

Perocco 1965 

. Artisti del primo novecento italiano. 

Turin, 1965. 

Perocco 1972 

. Le origini dell'arte moderna a Venezia 

1908-1920. Treviso, 1972 [2d ed.:Treviso, 1984]. 

Perseveranza 1909 

"L'esposizione alla Famiglia Artistica." 
La Perseveranza (Milan), Dee. 20, 1909. 

Perseveranza 1910 

"Alla Famiglia Artistica: Esposizione intima." 
La Perseveranza (Milan), Dee. 21, 1910. 

Perseveranza 1911 

"Esposizione libera." La Perseveranza (Milan), 
May 7, 1911. 

Pierre 1966 

J. Pierre. Le Futurisme et le Dadaisme. Paris, 1966. 



264 



Piatte 1957 

H. Piatte. Malerei. Die Kunst des 20. 
Jahrhunderts. Munich, 1957. 

Precerutti-Garberi 1974 

M. Precerutti-Garberi. Cinquantanni di pittura 
italiana nella collezione Boschi-Di Stefano donata 
al comune di Milano, Milan, 1974 [exh. cat.]. 

Prezzolini 1913 

G. Prezzolini. "Alcune idee chiare intorno al 
Futurismo." La Voce (Florence), Aprii 10, 
1913. 

Ragghianti 1962 

C. L. Ragghianti. Mondrian e l'arte del XX 
secolo. Milan, 1962 [2d. ed.: 1963]. 

Ragghianti 1964 

. "Fonti di Boccioni." Critica d'Arte 

(Florence) 11, sect. 64 (Sept.-Oct. 1964), 
pp. 23-28. 

Ragghianti 1965 

. "Boccioni prefuturista." Critica d'Arte 

(Florence) 12, sect. 69 (March 1965), pp. 14-25. 

Roche-Pézard 1983 

F. Roche-Pézard. Uaventure futuriste 1909-1916. 
Collection de l'Ecole Francese de Rome, 68. 
Rome, 1983. 

Rosenblum 1962 

R. Rosenblum. La storia del cubismo e l'arte del 
ventesimo secolo. Milan, 1962. 

Rotterdam 1913 

Les peintres et les sculpteurs futuristes italiens. 
Rotterdam, 1913 [exh. cat.]. 

Ryel972 

J. Rye. Futurism. London, 1972. 
Saarinen 1957 

A. B. Saarinen. "Collecting Modem Masters 
on a Master Pian. "Art News (New York) 56, 
no. 6 (Oct. 1957), pp. 32-34, 64-66. 

Sarfatti 1916 

M. Sarfatti. "L'opera di Umberto Boccioni." 
Gli Avvenimenti (Milan), no. 39, Sept. 24, 
1916, pp. 12-15. 

Sarfatti 1917 

. "Umberto Boccioni." Vita d'Arte 

(Siena) 16, nos. 3-4 (Aprii 30, 1917), 
pp. 41-50. 

Sarfatti 1924 

. "Umberto Boccioni — Luigi Galli." Il 

Popolo d'Italia (Rome), March 14, 1924. 

Secolo 1909 

"L'esposizione intima alla Famiglia Artistica." 
Il Secolo (Milan), Dee. 22, 1909. 



Secolo 1911 

"La prima esposizione d'arte libera." // Secolo 
(Milan), May 1, 1911. 

Seuphorl960 

M. Seuphor. The Sculpture ofThis Century. 
New York, 1960. 

Severini 1933 

G. Severini. "Ricordi su Boccioni." L'Esame 
Artistico e Letterario 5, no. 6 (July 1933), 
pp. 345-60. 

Severini 1946-68 

. Tutta la vita di un pittore. Part 1: Milan, 

1946 [2d ed.: Milan, 1965]. Part 2: Florence, 
1968 [integrated ed.: Milan, 1983]. 

Sironi and Zervos 1950 
M. Sironi and C. Zervos. "Omaggio a 
Boccioni." Spazio (Milan and Rome) 1, no. 1 
(July 1950), pp. 12-16. 

Soffici 1911 

A. Soffici. "Arte libera e pittura futurista. " La 
Voce (Florence), June 22, 1911. 

Soffici 1914 

. Cubismo e Futurismo. Florence, 1914. 

Stein 1946 

G. Stein. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. 
New York, 1946. 

Tallarico 1982 

L. Tallarico. Boccioni cento anni. Rome, 1982. 
Taylor 1961a 

J. C. Taylor. Futurism. New York, 1961 [exh. 
cat.]. 

Taylor 1961b 

. The Graphic Work of Umberto Boccioni. 

Garden City, 1961. 

Taylor 1963 

. "Harry Lewis Winston." In: 

D. Cooper, ed. Great Private Collections. 
Introduction by Kenneth Clark. New York, 
1963. 

Taylor 1968 

. "Futurism: The Avant-Garde as a 

Way of Life. " Art News Annual 34 (1968), 
pp. 81-87. 

Tegliol911 

A. Teglio. "Ritratti a penna: Umberto 
Boccioni." // Panaro (Modena), March 19, 
1911. 

Tisdall and Bozzolla 1977 

C. Tisdall and A. Bozzolla. Futurism. London, 

1977 [2d ed.: 1985]. 



Ungaretti 1950 

G. Ungaretti, ed. Pittori italiani contemporanei. 
Bologna, 1950. 

Valsecchi 1950 

M. Valsecchi. Umberto Boccioni. Venice, 1950. 
Veronesi 1955 

G. Veronesi. "Otto Boccioni inediti." Emporium 
(Bergamo), no. 122, December 1955, 

pp. 243-49. 

Walden 1912 

H. Walden. Die Futuristen. Berlin, 1912 
[publication of the periodical Der Sturm}. 

Walden 1917 

. Einblick in Kunst: Expressionismus, 

Futurismus, Kubismus. Berlin, 1917. 

Walden 1918 

. Expressionismus: Die Kunstwende. 

Berlin, 1918. 

Walden 1924 

. Einblick in Kunst: Expressionismus, 

Futurismus, Kubismus. 7th ed. Berlin, 1924. 

Winston 1958 

L. K. and H. L. Winston. "Collecting Modem 
Art. " Vassar Alumnae Magazine (Poughkeepsie), 
March 1958, pp. 10-13. 

Winston 1962 

. "Le Futurisme." Aujourd'hui (Paris), 

no. 35, Feb. 1962, pp. 4-13. 



BOCCIONI'S WRITINGS 

(by date) 

Another translation of the manifestos that ap- 
pear in this catalogue can be found in: Umbro 
Apollonio, ed. Futurist Manifestos. The Doc- 
uments of 20th-Century Art, 12. New York, 
1973. 

Manifesto dei pittori futuristi. Signed by Umberto 

Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Aroldo 

Bonzagni, and Romolo Romani; published as 

a leaflet by Poesia (Milan), Feb. 11, 1910 

[2d edition lacks signatures of Bonzagni and 

Romani]. 

La pittura futurista: Manifesto tecnico. Signed by 
Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, 
Giacomo Balla, and Gino Severini; published 
as a leaflet by Poesia (Milan), Aprii 11, 1910. 



265 



"Les exposants au public," signed by Umberto 
Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo 
Balla, and Gino Severini, in exhibition catalogue 
Lespeintres Juturistes italiens. Galerie 
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, February 1912. 

"The Exhibitors to the Public," signed by 
Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, 
Giacomo Balla, and Gino Severini, in exhibi- 
tion catalogue Exhibition of Works by the Italian 
FuturistPainters. The Sackville Gallery, London, 
March 1912. 

Manifesto tecnico della scultura futurista. Published 
as a leaflet by Poesia (Milan), Aprii 11, 1912. 

"Futuristen: Die Aussteller an das Publikum," 
signed by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, 
Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, and Gino 
Severini. Der S turni (Berlin), no. 105 
(Aprii 1912), pp. 3-4. 

"Manifest futuristov," signed by Umberto 
Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo 
Balla, and Gino Severini. In: Obshchestvo 
khudozhnikov: Soiuz molodezhi, part 2, 1912, 
pp. 23-25. 

"Fondamento plastico della pittura e scultura 
futuriste." Lacerba (Florence) 1, no. 6 
(March 15, 1913), pp. 51-52. 

"I futuristi plagiati in Francia." Lacerba 
(Florence) 1, no. 7 (Aprii 1, 1913), pp. 66-68. 

Preface in exhibition catalogue Prem ière exposi- 
tion de sculpture futuriste du peintre et sculpteur 
futuriste Boccioni. Galerie La Boétie, Paris, June 
1913. 

"La scultura futurista," Lacerba (Florence) 1, 
no. 13 (July 1, 1913), pp. 139-40. 

"Il Dinamismo futurista e la pittura francese." 
Lacerba (Florence) 1, no. 15 (Aug. 1, 1913), 
pp. 196-71. 

"Per l'ignoranza italiana: Sillabario pittorico." 
Lacerba (Florence) 1, no. 16 (Aug. 15, 1913), 
pp. 179-81. 

"Contro la vigliaccheria artistica italiana." 
Lacerba (Florence) 1, no. 17 (Sept. 1, 1913), 
pp. 190-91. 

"Programma politico futurista," signed by 
F. T. Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo 
Carrà, and Luigi Russolo. Lacerba (Florence) 1, 
no. 20 (Oct. 15, 1913), pp. 1-2. 

"Scarpetta da società 4- orina: Parole in libertà." 
Lacerba (Florence) 1, no. 22 (Nov. 15, 1913), 
pp. 254-56. 



Preface, signed by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo 
Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, and Gino 
Severini, in exhibition catalogue Esposizione di 
pittura futurista di "Lacerba" Galleria Gonnelli, 
Florence, November 1913. 

"Dinamismo plastico." Lacerba (Florence) 1, 
no. 24 (Dee. 15, 1913), pp. 288-90. 

Preface in exhibition catalogue Esposizione di 
scultura futurista del pittore e scultore futurista 
Boccioni. Galleria Futurista di Giuseppe 
Sprovieri, Rome, December 1913. 

"Simultaneità futurista." Lacerba (Florence) 2, 
no. 1 (Jan. 1, 1914), pp. 12-13. 

"Uomo 4- vallata + montagna: Parole in 
libertà." Lacerba (Florence) 2, no. 3 
(Feb. 1, 1914), pp. 44-45. 

Preface, signed by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo 
Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino 
Severini, and Ardengo Soffici, in exhibition 
catalogue Pittura futurista: Boccioni, Carrà, 
Russolo, Balla, Severini, Soffici. Galleria Futurista 
di Giuseppe Sprovieri, Rome, February 1914. 

"Il cerchio non si chiude!" Lacerba (Florence) 
2, no. 5 (March 1, 1914), pp. 67-69. 

"Moto assoluto + moto relativo — 
Dinamismo." Lacerba (Florence) 2, no. 6 (March 
15, 1914), pp. 90-93 [advance extract from 
Pittura, scultura futuriste]. 

Preface, signed by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo 
Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino 
Severini, and Ardengo Soffici, in exhibition 
catalogue Esposizione di pittura futurista. Galleria 
Futurista, Naples, May 1914. 

Pittura, scultura futuriste: Dinamismo plastico. 
Milan, 1914 [republished as Estetica e arte, Milan, 
1946]. 

"The Italian Painters and Sculptors: Initiators 
of Futurist Art." In: Catalogue de Luxe of the 
Department of Fine Arts, Panama- Pacific Interna- 
tional Exhibition 1, pp. 123-27. San Francisco, 
1915. 

"Arti plastiche." Gli Avvenimenti (Milan), 
Jan. 30-June 11, 1916 [a column contributed 
by Boccioni]. 

"Manifesto ai pittori meridionali." Vela Latina 
(Naples) 4, no. 4 (Feb. 15, 1916). 

"Sintesi teatrali." In: F. T. Marinetti, Emilio 
Settimelli, and Bruno Corra. Teatro futurista 
sintetico [supplement of Gli Avvenimenti]. Milan, 
1916. 



"Lettere di guerra di Umberto Boccioni." 
La Fiera Letteraria (Rome), July 10, 1927. 

Opera completa. Edited by F. T. Marinetti. 
Foligno, 1927. 

"Pene dell'anima: Un inedito di Boccioni." i7 
Lavoro Fascista (Rome), March 18, 1933 [partial 
publication; published in full in: Ester Coen, 
Boccioni prefuturista, Milan, 1983, pp. 43-49]. 

Gli scritti editi e inediti. Ed. by Z. Birolli. 
2vols. Milan, 1971-72. 



FUTURIST TEXTS 

(by date) 

F. T. Marinetti. Le Futurisme. Paris, 1911 [reprint 
with preface by G. Lista, Lausanne, 1982]. 

. Futurismo e Fascismo. Foligno, 1924. 

E. Falqui. Bibliografia e iconografia del Futurismo. 
Florence, 1959. 

J. Rye. Futurism. New York, 1972. 

U Apollonio, ed. Futurist Manifestos. The Doc- 
uments of 20th-Century Art, 12. New York, 
1973 [Italian ed.: Milan, 1970; 2d ed.: 1976). 

G. Lista. Futurisme: Manifestes, documents, pro- 
clamations. Lausanne, 1973. 

L. De Maria, ed. Per conoscere Marinetti e il 
Futurismo. Milan, 1973 [2ded.: 1981]. 

J. P. Andreoli-de Villers. Futurism and the Arts: 
A Bibliography 1959-73. Toronto and Buffalo, 
1975. 

A, Baldazzi, ed. Contributo a una bibliografia del 
futurismo letterario italiano. Rome, 1977. 

G. Lista, ed. Marinetti et le Futurisme: Etudes, 
documents, iconographies. Cahiers des avant- 
gardes. Lausanne, 1977. 

Esposizioni futuriste. Florence, 1978 [a collection 
of 26 exhibition catalogues 1913-30]. 

L. Caruso, ed. Manifesti, proclami, interventi e 
documenti teorici del Futurismo, 1909-1944. 
Florence, 1980. 



266 



List of Exhibitions 



Rome 1905a 

LXXV Esposizione internazionale di belle arti. 
Rome, Società degli Amatori e Cultori, Feb.- 
March 1905 

Rome 1905a 

LXXV Esposizione Internazionale di Belle Arti. 
Rome, Società degli Amatori e Cultori, Feb.- 
March 1905 

Rome 1905b 

Mostra dei Rifiutati. Rome, Ridotto del Teatro 
Nazionale, Feb. -March 1905 

Rome 1906 

LXXVI Esposizione internazionale di belle arti. 
Rome, Società degli Amatori e Cultori, Feb.- 
March 1906 

Milan 1908 

Concorso Mylius alla Permanente. Milan, Palazzo 
della Permanente, July 1908 

Milan 1909 

Esposizione riservata agli artisti lombardi e ai soci. 
Milan, Palazzo della Permanente, Aprii 10- 
May 12, 1909 

Brunatel909 

Esposizione di pittura e scultura. Brunate, May- 
June 1909 

Milan 1909-10 

Esposizione annuale d'arte della Famiglia Artistica. 
Milan, Famiglia Artistica, Dee. 15, 1909- 
Jan. 8, 1910 

Milan 1910 

Mostra annuale degli artisti lombardi. Milan, Pa- 
lazzo della Permanente, spring 1910 

Venice 1910 

Mostra d'estate in Palazzo Pesaro. Venice, 
Ca' Pesaro, July 16-Oct. 20, 1910 

Milan 1910-11 

Esposizione annuale d'arte della Famiglia Artistica. 
Milan, Famiglia Artistica, Dee. 1910-Jan. 1911 

Milan 191 la 

Mostra d'Arte Libera:! manifestazione collettiva dei 
Futuristi. Milan, Padiglione Ricordi, spring 1911 



Milan 191 lb 

Esposizione intima annuale. Milan, Famiglia 
Artistica, Dee. 1911 

Paris 1912 

Les peintres futuristes italiens. Paris, Galene 
Bernheim-Jeune, Feb. 5-24, 1912 

London 1912 

Exhibition of Works by the ìtalian Futurist Paint- 
ers. London, The Sackville Gallery, March 1912 

Berlin 1912 

Zweite Ausstellung: Die Futuristen. Berlin, Galerie 
Der Sturm, Aprii 12-May 31, 1912 

Brussels 1912 

Les peintres futuristes italiens. Brussels, Galerie 
Georges Giroux, May 20-June 1, 1912 

'Rome 1913a 

I Esposizione di pittura futurista. Rome, Ridotto 
del Teatro Costanzi/ Galleria G. Giosi, Feb. 
1913 

Rotterdam 1913 

Les peintres et les sculpteurs futuristes italiens. Rot- 
terdam, Rotterdamsche Kunstkring, May 18- 
Junel5, 1913 

Paris 1913 

Première exposition de sculpture futuriste dupeintre 
et sculpteur futuriste Boccioni. Paris, Galerie La 
Boétie, June 20-July 16, 1913 

Berlin 1913 

Erster deutscher Herbstsalon. Berlin, Galerie Der 
Sturm, Sept. 20-Nov. 1913 

Florence 1913-14 

Esposizione di pittura futurista di u Lacerba." Flor- 
ence, Galleria Gonnelli, Nov. 1913-Jan. 1914 

Rome 1913b 

Esposizione di scultura futurista del pittore e scultore 
futurista Boccioni. Rome, Galleria Futurista di 
Giuseppe Sprovieri, Dee. 1913 

Leipzig 1914 

Die Futuristen. Leipzig, Galerie Del Vecchio, 
Jan.-Feb. 1914 



Rome 1914 

Pittura futurista: Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Balla, 
Severini, Soffici. Rome, Galleria Futurista di 
Giuseppe Sprovieri, Feb. -March 1914 

London 1914 

Exhibition ofthe Works ofthe ìtalian Futurist Paint- 
ers and Sculptors. London, The Dorè Galleries, 
April-May 1914 

Naples 1914 

I Esposizione di pittura futurista. Naples, Galleria 
Futurista, May— June 1914 

San Francisco 1915 

Panama- Pacific International Exhibition. San Fran- 
cisco, The Palace of Fine Arts, summer 1915 

Milan 1916-17 

Grande esposizione Boccioni. Milan, Palazzo 
Cova, Dee. 28, 1916-Jan. 14, 1917 

Berlin 1917 

Dreiundfunfzigste Ausstellung (Sturm-Gesamt- 
schau). Berlin, Galerie Der Sturm, June 1917 

Gene va 1920-21 

Exposition Internationale d'Art Moderne. Geneva, 
Dee. 26, 1920-Jan. 25, 1921 

Macerata 1922 

I Esposizione futurista. Macerata, Palazzo del 
Convitto Nazionale, June-July 1922 

Milan 1924 

Umberto Boccioni. Milan, Bottega di Poesia, 
March 10-21, 1924 

Rome 1925 

III Biennale romana: Mostra retrospettiva di Umberto 
Boccioni. Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 
Marchi -June 30, 1925 

Milan 1927 

Mostra di trentaquattro pittori futuristi. Milan, 
Galleria Pesaro, Nov.-Dec. 1927 

Milan 1933 

Umberto Boccioni. Milan, Castello Sforzesco, 1933 
Milan 1934 

Mostra commemorativa del cinquantenario. Milan, 
Palazzo della Permanente, Dee. 1934 



267 



Paris 1935 

L'art italien des XIX e et XX e sièdes. Paris, Musée 
dujeu de Paume, May-July 1935 

Berlin 1937 

Ausstellung italienischer Kunst von 1800 bis zur 
Gegenwart. Berlin, Akademie der Kùnste, Nov.- 
Dec. 1937 

Rome 1948 

Rassegna nazionale di arti figurative. Rome, 
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, March-May 1948 

Venicel948 

Mostra dei primi espositori di Ca' Pesaro ( 1908- 
1920). Venice, Opera Bevilacqua La Masa, 
summer 1948 

New York 1949 

Twentieth Century Italian Art. New York, The 
Museum of Modem Art, June 28-Sept. 18, 1949 . 

Venice 1950 

XXV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte: 
Retrospettiva di Boccioni. Venice, June 8-Oct. 15, 
1950 

Bologna 1951 

Mostra nazionale della pittura e della scultura 
futurista. Bologna, 1951 

Venice 1952 

XXVI Esposizione biennale internazionale d'arte: 
Divisionismo in Francia e in Italia. Venice, 1952 

Rome 1953 

Mostra dell'arte nella vita del Mezzogiorno d'Italia: 
U. Boccioni. Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 
March-May 1953 

Milan 1953 

La donna nell'arte da Hayez a Modigliani. Milan, 
Palazzo della Permanente, April-June 1953 

New York 1954 

Futurism. New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, 
March 22-Mayl, 1954 

Rome 1955 

Disegni di Boccioni. Rome, Galleria dello 
Zodiaco, May 1955 

Kassell955 

Documenta '55: Kunst des XX. Jahrhunderts. 
Kassel, Museum Fridericianum, July 15- 
Sept. 18, 1955 

Rome 1955-56 

VII Quadriennale nazionale d'arte: Antologia della 
pittura e scultura italiana dal 1910 al 1930. Rome, 
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Nov. 1955- Aprii 1956 

Munich 1957 

Ausstellung italienischer Kunst von 1910 bis zur 



Gegenwart. Munich, Haus der Kunst, June 7- 
Sept. 15, 1957 

Detroit 1957-58 

Collecting Modem Art: Paintings, Sculpture and 
Drawings from The Collection ofMr. and Mrs. 
Harry Lewis Winston. The Detroit Institute of 
Arts, Sept. 27-Nov. 3, 1957; traveled to: Rich- 
mond, Virginia, Museum of Art, Dee. 13,1957- 
Jan. 5, 1958; San Francisco Museum of Art, 
Jan. 23-March 13, 1958; Milwaukee Art Insti- 
tute, Aprii li-May 12, 1958; Minneapolis, 
Walker Art Center, June 13-Aug. 3, 1958 

Venice 1958 

Primi espositori di Ca' Pesaro, 1908-1909. Ven- 
ice, Sala Napoleonica, Aug. 28-Oct. 19, 1958 

Rome 1959 

Il Futurismo. Rome, Palazzo Barberini, June 4- 
Sept. 6, 1959 

Verona 1959 

Mostra postuma di Umberto Boccioni. Verona, 
Galleria Ferrari, Dee. 21-31, 1959 

Blois 1959 

Peintres et sculpteurs italiens du Futurisme à nos 
jours. Blois, Chàteau, 1959 [traveled to various 
French cities] 

Winterthur 1959 

Futurismus. Winterthur, Kunstmuseum, Oct. 4- 
Nov. 15, 1959; traveled to: Munich, Stàd- 
tische Galene und Lembachgalerie, Dee. 5, 
1959-Feb. 14, 1960 

Milan 1960 

Boccioni: Mostra di opere inedite prefuturiste , dipinti 
e disegni del periodo futurista. Milan, Famiglia 
Artistica, Feb. 6-28, 1960 

Venice 1960 

XXX Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte: 
Mostra storica del Futurismo. Venice, June 18— 
Oct. 16, 1960 

Milan 1960b 

Arte italiana del XX secolo da collezione americane. 
Milan, Palazzo Reale, Aprii 30-June 26, 1960; 
traveled to: Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte 
Moderna, July 6-Sept. 18, 1960 

Paris 1960-61 

Les sources du XXème siede: Les arts en Europe 
de 1884 à 1914. Paris, Musée National d'Art 
Moderne, Nov. 4, 1960-Jan. 23, 1961 

New York 1961 

Futurism. New York, The Museum of Modem 
Art, May 31 -Sept. 5, 1961; traveled to: The 
Detroit Institute of Arts, Oct. 18-Dec. 19, 1961; 



Los Angeles County Museum, Jan. 14- 
Feb.19, 1962 

Cologne 1962 

Europaische Kunst 1912. Cologne, Wallraf- 
Richartz Museum, Sept. 14-Dec. 9, 1962 

Ivrea 1963 

Grafici del primo Novecento italiano. Ivrea, Centro 
Culturale Olivetti, Aprii 1963 

Hamburg 1963 

Italien 1905-1925: Futurismus und Pittura 
Metafisica. Hamburg, Kunstverein, Sept. 28- 
Nov. 3, 1963; traveled to: Frankfurt, Frankfurter 
Kunstverein, Nov. 16, 1963-Jan. 5, 1964 

Venice 1966 

XXXIII Esposizione internazionale d'arte: 
Retrospettiva di Boccioni. Venice, 
June 18-Oct. 16, 1966 

Reggio Calabria 1966 

Omaggio a Boccioni. Reggio Calabria, Museo 
Nazionale, June 21 -Oct. 21, 1966 

Florence 1967 

Arte moderna in Italia 1915-1935. Florence, Pa- 
lazzo Strozzi, Feb. 26-May 28, 1967 

Turin 1967 

Una scelta da museo. Turin, Galleria Gissi, 1967 
Genoa 1968 

Opere grafiche di Umberto Boccioni. Genoa, Pa- 
lazzo dell'Accademia, Nov. 16-Dec. 15, 1968 

Rome 1968-69 

Cento opere d'arte italiana dal Futurismo ad oggi. 
Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, 
Dee. 20, 1968-Jan. 20, 1969 

Detroit 1969 

Detroit Collects. The Detroit Institute of Arts, 
May 15-June22, 1969 

Milan 1970 

Mostra del Divisionismo italiano. Milan, Palazzo 
della Permanente, March- Aprii 1970 

Cortina d'Ampezzo 1970 
Rassegna di maestri contemporanei. Cortina 
d'Ampezzo, Grand Hotel Savoia, Aug. 1- 
Sept. 10, 1970 

Los Angeles 1970-71 

The CubistEpoch. Los Angeles County Museum 
of Art, Dee. 15, 1970-Feb. 21, 1971; traveled 
to: New York, The Metropolitan Museum of 
Art, Aprii 9-June 7, 1971 



268 



Milanl971 

Milano 70/70. Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, 
Aprii 28-June 10, 1971 

Verona 1971 

Verona anni Venti. Verona, Palazzo della Gran 
Guardia, July-Oct. 1971 

Cortina d'Ampezzo 1971-72 
Omaggio a Umberto Boccioni. Cortina d'Ampezzo, 
Galleria d'Arte Moderna Falsetti, Dee. 25, 
1971-Jan. 10, 1972 

Newcastle upon Tyne 1972 
Exhibition ofltalian Futurism. Newcastle upon 
Tyne, Hatton Gallery, Nov. 13-Dec. 8, 1972; 
traveled to: Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Acad- 
emy, Dee. 16, 1972 -Jan. 14, 1973; London, 
Royal Academy of Arts, Jan. 27-March 4, 1973 

Detroit 1972-73 

Selections from The Lydia and Harry Lewis Win- 
ston Collection (Dr. and Mrs. Barnett Malbin). 
The Detroit Institute of Arts, July 18, 1972- 
April20, 1973 

Paris 1973 

Le Futurisme 1909-1916. Paris, Musée National 
d'Art Moderne, Sept. 19-Nov. 19, 1973 

New York 1973-74 

Futurism: A Modem Focus: The Lydia and Harry 
Lewis Winston Collection [of] Dr. and Mrs. Bar- 
nett Malbin. New York, The Solomon R. 
Guggenheim Museum, Nov. 16, 1973-Feb. 3, 
1974 

Milan 1973-74 

Boccioni e il suo tempo. Milan, Palazzo Reale, 
Dee. 1973-Feb. 1974 

Dusseldorf 1974 

Futurismus 1909-1917: Wir setzen den Betrachter 
mitten ins Bild. Dusseldorf, Stadtische 
Kunsthalle, March 17-April28, 1974 

Milan 1974 

Cinquantanni di pittura italiana nella collezione 
Boschi-Di Stefano donata al Comune di Milano. 
Milan, Palazzo Reale, May27-Sept. 20, 1974 

New York 1974-75 

Masters of Modem Sculpture. New York, The 



Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Nov. 19, 
1974-Feb. 27, 1975 

Gene va 1977-78 

Du Futurisme au Spatialisme: Peinture italienne de 
la première moitié du XXème siècle. Geneva, Musée 
Rath, Oct. 7, 1977-Jan. 15, 1978 

Washington 1978 

Aspects ofTwentieth Century Art: European Paint- 
ing and Sculpture. Washington, D.C., National 
Gallery of Art, June 1-Sept. 4, 1978 

London 1979-80 

Post Impressionism: Cross-Currents in European 
and American Painting. London, Royal Academy 
of Art, Dee. 1979-Jan. 1980; traveled to: 
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 
May-Sept. 1980 

Milan 1979-80 

Origini dell'astrattismo: Verso altri orizzonti del 
reale. Milan, Palazzo Reale, Oct. 18, 1979- 
Jan. 18, 1980 

Milan 1980 

Nuove tendenze: Milano e V altro Futurismo. Milan, 
Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Jan.— March 
1980 

Paris 1980 

Oeuvres futuristes du Museum of Modem Art, New 
York. Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, 
Centre Georges Pompidou, Aprii 16-Sept. 15, 
1980 

Philadelphia 1980-81 

Futurism and the International Avant-Garde. Phila- 
delphia Museum of Art, Oct. 26, 1980-Jan. 4, 
1981 

Rome 1980-81 

Apollinare e l'avanguardia. Rome, Galleria 
Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Nov. 30, 1980- 
Jan. 4, 1981 

Washington 1981 

Rodin Rediscovered. Washington, D.C., National 
Gallery of Art, June 28-Oct. 6, 1981 



Tokyo 1982 

The 14th International Art Exhibition: One Hun- 
dred Years of Modem Italian Art, 1880-1980. 
Tokyo, 1982 

Rome 1982 

L'immagine del socialismo nell'arte, nelle bandiere, 
nei simboli. Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 
June 1982 

Milan 1982-83 

Boccioni a Milano. Milan, Palazzo Reale, Dee. 9, 
1982-April 6, 1983; traveled to: Hanover, 
Kunstmuseum, May 20-July 31, 1983 

New Havenl983 

The Futurist Imagination: Word + Image in Ital- 
ian Futurist Painting, Drawing, Collage and Free- 
word Poetry. New Haven, Yale University Art 
Gallery, Aprii 13-June26, 1983 

Reggio Calabria 1983 

Boccioni prefuturista. Reggio Calabria, Museo 
Nazionale, July 5-Sept. 30, 1983; traveled to: 
Rome, Palazzo Venezia, Oct. 18-Nov. 27, 1983 

Vemce 1983-84 

Venezia dell'800. Venice, Sala Napoleonica e 
Museo Correr, Dee. 1983-March 1984 

Frankfurt 1985 

Italienische Kunst 1900-1980. Frankfurt, Frank- 
furter Kunstverein, Feb. 22- Aprii 8, 1985 

Verona 1985-86 

Boccioni a Venezia, dagli anni romani alla Mostra 
d'Estate a Ca' Pesaro: Momenti della stagione 
futurista. Verona, Galleria dello Scudo and Museo 
di Castelvecchio, Dee. 1, 1985-Jan. 31, 1986; 
traveled to: Milan, Accademia di Brera, Feb. 28- 
April 13, 1986; Venice, San Stae, Aprii 19- 
Junel, 1986 

Venice 1986 

Futurismo & Futurismi. Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 
May-Sept. 1986 

Rome 1987 

Arte del Novecento italiano nelle collezioni Assitalia. 
Rome, Accademia di Francia — Villa Medici, 
June 20-July 15, 1987 



269 



Index of Titles 



Note: Numbers refer to cataloguc entries. English titles 
appear in roman type; Italian titles, which are taken 
from Calvesi and Coen 1983, appear in italic type. 



Abstract Dimensions, 67 
Adriana Bisi Fabbri, 11 

Agitateci Crowd Surrounding a High Equestrian 

Monument, 30a 
Analytical Study of a Woman's Head Against 

Buildings, 70b 
Annegato, L', 95 
Antigraceful (bronze), 86 
Antigraceful (oil), 66 
Antigrazioso (bronze), 86 
Antigrazioso (oil), 66 
Aprii Evening, 21 
Artist's Mother, The, 84b 
Artist's Mother at a Table, The, 96 
Artist's Mother Crocheting, The, 90 
Artist's Mother Sewing, The, 97 
Auto in corsa, 98 
Automobile e caccia alla volpe, 99 
Autoritratto (1905), 4 
Autoritratto (1905-1906), 20b 
Autoritratto (1908), 20a 
Autoritratto (1910), 42 

Barche al sole, 13 
Bevitore, II, 79 
Boats in Sunlight, 13 
Bozzetto per La città sale, 51j 
Bozzetto per Quelli che vanno, 56j 

Campagna con alberi, 24 
Campagna lombarda, 23a 
Campagna romana, 2 
Canal Grande a Venezia, II, 14 
Car and Fox Hunt, 99 
Carica di lancieri, 81 
Car in Motion, 98 
Cavalli e figure, 51 E 
Cavalli sul selciato, 51 d 
Cavallo, 76b 

Cavallo + cavaliere + caseggiato, 75d 
Chiostro, 3 
Città sale, La, 50 
City Rises, The, 50 
Cloister of S. Onofrio, 3 
Contadini al lavoro, 25a 



Costruzione orizzontale, 59 
Countryside with Trees, 24 
Crepuscolo, 37 

Development of a Bottle in Space, 88 
Dimensioni astratte, 67 
Dinamismo di una testa d'uomo, 11 
Dinamismo di un ciclista, 73a-g 
Dinamismo di un corpo umano, 71 
Dinamismo di un corpo umano (study), 72c 
Dinamismo di un Foot-baller, 74 
Dinamismo muscolare (charcoal and watercolor), 
72b 

Dinamismo muscolare (ink and gouache), 72d 

Dinamismo muscolare (pencil), 72a 

Dinamismo plastico: Cauallo + caseggiato, 75a 

Disegno da Gli addii, 56f 

Disegno da Quelli che vanno, 56i 

Donna al caffè — Compenetrazioni di luci e di 

piani, 68 
Donna appoggiata ad una sedia, 47c 
Donna seduta, 17 

Drawing After ''States of Mind: The Farewells," 
56f 

Drawing After "States of Mind: Those 

Who Go,"56i 
Drinker, The, 78 
Due amiche, Le, SO a 
Dynamic Decomposition, 72f 
Dynamism of a Cyclist, 73a-g 
Dynamism of a Human Body, 71 
Dynamism of a Human Body (study), 72c 
Dynamism of a Man's Head, 77 
Dynamism of a Soccer Player, 74 

Elasticità, 69 
Elasticity, 69 

Fabbrica Foltzer, 35 
Factories at Porta Romana, 38 
Falciatore, II, 40 
Ferruccio Busoni, 85 
Figura, 64 

Figura allegorica inginocchiata, 29 
Figure, 64 



Folla intorno al monumento equestre, 30a 

Foltzer Factory, The, 35 

Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio, 88 

Forze di una strada, Le, 58a 

Fragment of a City Pian, 30b 

Gamboloita Bridge, The, 43 
Giants and Pygmies, 51 a 
Giganti e pigmei, 51a 
Giovane sulla riva di un fiume, 1 a 
Gisella (drypoint), 15b 
Gisella (pastel), 15a 
Gli addii — Stati d'animo II, 56a 
Grand Canal in Venice, The, 14 

Head Against the Light (The Artist's 

Sister), 61b 
Head of an Old Man, 33 
Head of a Young Woman with a Large Hat, 

55c 

Head of the Artist's Mother, 84a 
Horizontal Volumes, 59 
Horse, 75b 

Horse + Rider + Houses, 75d 
Horses and Figures in a Landscape, 51e 

Idolo moderno, 55a 

Interior with the Artist's Mother at Work, 34 
Interior with Two Female Figures, 80b 
Interno con due figure femminili, 80b 
Interno con la madre che lavora, 34 

Kneeling Allegorical Figure, 29 

Lancers' Charge, 81 

Landscape with Industriai Plants, 93 

Laugh, The, 53 

Lombard Countryside, 23a 

Lombard Landscape, 26 

Macchina da cucire, 22 
Madre, La (1906), 9 
Madre, La (1909), 32 

Madre, La (1915; charcoal and watercolor), 84b 
Madre, La (1915; pencil, ink, and watercolor), 84 A 



270 



Madre che cuce, La, 97 

Madre con l'uncinetto, La, 90 

Madre davanti al tavolo con forbici, La, 96 

Madre e figlio, 6 

Male Cadaveri "The Drowned Man, " 95 

Man at a Café Table, Paris, 70a 

Man Leading a Horse, 51 f 

Man Lying in a Field, 89 

Man with Mustache, 54c 

Maria Sacchi, 16a 

Maria Sacchi Reading, 16b 

Materia, 60 

Matter, 60 

Mattino, 36 

Modem Idol, 55a 

Morning, 36 

Mother, The (1906), 9 

Mother, The (1909), 32 

Mother and Child, 6 

Muscles in Velocity, 72e 

Muscoli in velocità, 72e 

Muscular Dynamism (charcoal and watercolor), 
72b 

Muscular Dynamism (ink and gouache), 72d 

Natura morta con sifone per seltz, 65 
Nonna, 1 

Officine a Porta Romana, 38 
Old Woman, The, 7 

Paesaggio lombardo, 26 
Passing Train, 27 
Peasants at Work, 25a 
Periferia, 93 

Pianist and Listener, 28 

Pianoforte, 28 

Piazza del Duomo, 92 

Plastic Dynamism: "Horse 4- Houses" (ink), 75c 
Plastic Dynamism: Horse + Houses (oil), 75a 
Plastic Synthesis of a Seated Figure (Silvia), 
83a 

Ponte di Gamboloita, 43 

Portrait of a Child with Dolls, 44 

Portrait of a Young Woman, 39 

Quelli che restano — Stati d'animo II, 56c 
Quelli che vanno — Staff d'animo I, 56g 
Quelli che vanno — Stati d'animo II, 56b 

Reaper, The, 40 
Riot in the Galleria, 49 
Risata, La, 53 
Rissa in Galleria, 49 

Ritratto della pittrice Adriana Bisi Fabbri, 1 1 



Ritratto del Maestro Ferruccio Busoni, 86 

Ritratto di bambina fra le bambole, 44 

Ritratto di donna, 45 

Ritratto di scultore, 12 

Ritratto di Sophie Popoff 8 

Ritratto femminile, 39 

Roman Landscape, 2 

Schizzi di teste, 94 

Scomposizione dinamica, 72f 

Sculptor, The, 12 

Seated Male Nude, 47a 

Seated Woman (Artist's Mother), 17 

Seated Woman Holding a Fan, 91 

Seated Woman with a Dark Blouse, 47b 

Selciatori, I, 76a 

Self-Portrait (1905), 4 

Self-Portrait (1905-1906), 20b 

Self-Portrait (1908), 20a 

Self-Portrait (1910), 42 

Sera d'aprile, 21 

Sheet of Studies including two composition 
sketches for "The City Rises" and two for 
a scene of an urban crowd, 51k 

Sheet of Studies with Five Portraits, 95 

Signora con ventaglio, 92 

Signora Massimino, La, 19 

Signora Sacchi, La (etching), 16b 

Signora Sacchi, La (pastel), 16a 

Signora Virginia, La, 5 

Silvia, 83b 

Simultaneous Visions, 57 

Sintesi plastica di figura seduta (Silvia), 83a 

Sketch for "States of Mind: Those Who Go, " 56j 

Sophie Popoff, 8 

Sotto la pergola a Napoli, 79 

States of Mind: The Farewells, 56a 

States of Mind: Those Who Go (Civico Museo 

d'Arte Contemporanea), 56g 
States of Mind: Those Who Go (Museum of 

Modem Art), 56b 
States of Mind: Those Who Stay, 56c 
Stili Life: Glass and Siphon, 65 
Street Pavers, The, 76a 
Strengths of a Street, The, 58a 
Studi di folla, 51 k 
Studies with Script, 23c 
Studio (Head + Light + Window), 61 A 
Studio (Man with Mustache), 54c 
Studio di avambraccio maschile, 46 A 
Studio di braccia tese con mani congiunte, 46b 
Studio di composizione, 1b 
Studio di donna seduta con camiciotto scuro, 47b 
Studio di nudo, 83 
Studio di nudo maschile, 47 A 
Studio di testa, 70b 



Studio d'uomo, 51 G 

Studio per Baruffa, 52 

Studio per Campagna lombarda, 23b 

Studio per Cavallo + case, 75c 

Studio per Cavallo + cavaliere + caseggiato, 76e 

Studio per Contadini al lavoro, 25b 

Studio per Gli addii — / (charcoal and chalk), 56e 

Studio per Gli addii — / (pencil), 56d 

Studio per Idolo moderno, 55b 

Studio per II lutto (ink), 48a 

Studio per II lutto (pencil, charcoal, and gray wash), 
48b 

Studio per II sogno, 31 

Studio per I selciatori (Man Lay ing Paving Stones) , 
76b 

Studio per I selciatori (Two Workmen), 76c 

Studio per La città sale (pencil), 51 h 

Studio per La città sale (pencil; recto), 51 b 

Studio per La città sale (tempera), 51 1 

Studio per La risata, 54a 

Studio per La risata (recto), 54b 

Studio per Le forze di una strada, 48b 

Studio per Quelli che restano, 56k 

Studio per Quelli che vanno, 56h 

Studio per Testa e Luce, 61 B 

Studio per Veneriamo la madre, 18 

Studio per Vuoti e pieni astratti di una testa, 62 

Study for "Head + Light + Window," 61 A 

Study for "Homage to Mother," 18 

Study for "Horse + Rider + Houses," 75e 

Study for "Lombard Countryside," 23b 

Study for "Modem Idol," 55b 

Study for "Mourning" (ink), 48a 

Study for "Mourning" (pencil, charcoal, and 

gray wash), 48b 
Study for "Peasants at Work," 25b 
Study for "States of Mind: The Farewells" 

(charcoal and chalk), 56e 
Study for "States of Mind: The Farewells" 

(pencil), 56d 
Study for "States of Mind: Those Who Go," 

56h 

Study for "States of Mind: Those Who Stay," 
56k 

Study for "The City Rises" (pencil; Malbin 

collection), 51h 
Study for "The City Rises" (pencil; Museum 

of Modem Art), 51j 
Study for "The City Rises" (pencil; recto), 51b 
Study for "The City Rises" (tempera), 51 1 
Study for "The Dream": Sheet with Three 

Studies of a Reclining Nude and a Study of a 

Reclining Couple, 31 
Study for "The Laugh," 54a 
Study for "The Laugh," (recto), 54b 
Study for "The Riot, "52 



271 



Study for the Sculpture "Empty and Full 

Abstracts of a Head," 62 
Study for "The Story of a Seamstress": Sewing 

Machine, 22 
Study for "The Street Pavers": Man Laying 

Paving Stones, 76b 
Study for "The Street Pavers": Two 

Workmen, 76c 
Study for "The Strengths of a Street," 58b 
Study for "Unique Forms of Continuity in 

Space," 72a 
Study of a Man, 51 G 
Study of a Nude, 83 
Study of a Wagnerian Scene, 1b 
Study of Extended Arms with Hands Clasped, 

46b 

Study of Man's Forearm, 46a 
Sviluppo di una bottiglia nello spazio, 87 



Tablc + Bottle + House, 63 
Tavola + bottiglia + caseggiato, 63 
Testa di donna, 55 c 
Testa dì vecchio, 33 

Three Horses Tended by Men; Stone Pavement, 
51d 

Three Women, 41 

Tre donne, 41 

Treno che passa, 27 

Twilight, 37 

Two Friends, The, 80a 

Under the Trellis in Naples, 80 
Unidentifiable subject (horse in motion), 51 c 
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 88 
Uomo a un tavolino da caffè, 70 a 
Uomo con cavallo, 51f 
Uomo sdraiato su un prato, 90 



Virgilio Brocchi, 10 
Visioni simultanee, 57 

Woman in a Café: Compenetrations of Lights 

and Planes, 68 
Woman Leaning on a Chair (The Artist's Sister), 

47c 

Young Man on a Riverbank, 1a 
Young Woman Reading (Ines), 45 



272 




ISBN 0-8109-0721-6